


regret takes hold (we grow old)

by thatiranianphantom



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alcoholism, And we'll all just live with that, Archie's in the army, Betrayal, Businesswoman Veronica, Exes to Lovers, F/F, F/M, FBI agent betty, Falice wedding, I feel like in the last chapter or two management made a decision, Jury's still out on Varchie vs Veggie, Management will make a game time decision, Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Reunions, S5 Speculation, Some truly shitty significant others, Speculation, Those Meddling Kids solve another mystery!, Writer Jug, bughead - Freeform, season 5
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 46,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27342808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatiranianphantom/pseuds/thatiranianphantom
Summary: It's been seven years, and they're as good as strangers. But when family calls, Betty, Jughead, Archie and Veronica answer. As they come back to Riverdale, they find themselves tied up in a new mystery, much more personal than it seems. The investigation will take all four of them on a journey, and old feelings rise to the surface.Could they even find their way back into each other's arms, or is it too late?Season 5, or my rewrite on S5. A multichapter (re)working of the upcoming fifth season.
Relationships: Alice Cooper/FP Jones II, Archie Andrews/Veronica Lodge, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones, Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz, Hermione Lodge/Hiram Lodge, Veronica Lodge/Reggie Mantle
Comments: 239
Kudos: 165
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	1. i know they're out there

**Author's Note:**

> ....yeah, I don't even have an explanation for you guys. I wish I did. I have three WIPs, I promised I'd do a Hamilton fic, and yet here we are, at the start of another multichapter fic where I attempt to fix the writers' egregious mistakes. For FREE. 
> 
> I should note, we're using rumors from S5. Obviously, but for the seven year time jump, none of these have been confirmed yet. So take it with a grain of salt, but know you could be walking into spoilers.
> 
> Another note, I am writing mystery and plot here. Later, I'll likely be writing light smut. This is WAYYYYYYY out of my comfort zone. I hope you enjoy anyway?

_ i set our bridge on fire _

_ but i could not burn it down  _

* * *

The clock on the wall is broken. 

It’s 1:32, but it reads 5:48. It’s so egregiously wrong, and he wonders why nobody has done anything about it.

It ticks on, though. The metronome of the seconds hand echoes softly in the background. 

_ Tick. Tick. Tick. _

He breathes through a full minute’s count.

_ Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.  _ But the door doesn’t move. 

Idly, he thinks about that stupid expression - a broken clock is right twice a day. His mother used to say that, and he never knew what it meant. Not like he could ask his mother, though. She was too busy, enjoying the drinking and passing out parts of life too much to talk to her son.

Perhaps it’s no surprise he ended up here, that the events set in motion would lead him to this spot, waiting for her to give him his marching orders. 

They’re always careful - different place, different time, all calls under 15 seconds. No stupid mistakes, not this time. 

And he’s not nervous, per se. No, they’d worked it out, both of them. He knew his role; she knew hers. They had their marks. It was like a bowling game, he thought. He’d gotten to do that, once, in third grade. A field trip. It was near the end of the year; he’s pretty sure his teachers were just filling time. 

He’d made two strikes. 

He likes to think that’s some kind of symmetry. Idly, he wonders what his eight-year-old self would think if they could see him now, then decides not to delve too far into that particular minefield. 

He never gets the chance to, anyway, before the door opens up, and she makes her way to the booth, sliding in next to him and leaning up to his ear conspiratorially. 

_ “The first two are done. It’s started.”  _

* * *

  
  


The third past-due bill arrives in the third week of the month, and he doesn’t know why they still bother. It’s not like he’s had the money to pay them, not in months. But the bills keep coming.

That wouldn’t be as much of a problem, but that Jessica keeps finding them. 

He’d just as soon ignore them, he’s trained to, but Jessica finds them wherever he puts them. It’s become part of her nightly ritual - come home and find the bills Jughead tried to hide. He could probably hide them better if he tried. But a blank word document is a cruel mistress, and she commands his attention all day, every day. 

(And every night.) 

She yells when she finds them, every night. They barely talk anymore, except to fight. They exist like two ships passing in the night. 

In the very worst moments, Jughead tries to conjure up the image of the Jessica he knew, of the good times. It’s there, but the memory is hazy. It’s a blurred image, and he feels so very disconnected from it. 

He’s not ready to admit that the feelings he feels toward her are much the same. Because she’s kind, pretty and generous, and helps pay the bills, she closed something inside of him that was gaping and open when they met. 

They’ve been living together for about a year. Together for twenty months. The apartment is small, but once, it was cozy. 

_ Once _ . Now there are past due bills and yelling. 

And then there’s the drinking. 

It had started small. He’d had a friend coax him into getting a beer. He never really drank, for obvious reasons. But he’d had a fight with Jessica, and he was getting nowhere with his book, and the landlord had personally knocked on the door. 

It felt like one beer couldn’t hurt.

And it didn’t. Instead, it had a very liberating effect. He felt lighter, freer, came home, wrote two pages, and had sex with his girlfriend. 

It felt as good as something in his life could possibly feel, but that was going to be it. And it was, until the next time, three days later.

He’s not an alcoholic. He swears that to himself because that word has connotations. That word, he knows too well. That word is screaming and swearing and fighting and past due bills. 

So, essentially, all that is his life right now, but he’s not an alcoholic. 

Not a chance. 

It’s just that a nick of alcohol every now and then helps lubricate his brain. 

It’s not something he ever feels he’ll come to rely on.

He thinks this until he’s kicked off a publishers meeting when they smell the alcohol reeking from his pores. 

His first book was a roaring success. A breakthrough onto the scene, they said. When it was most needed at a time in his life, the world found him and adored him. That adoration had come before, from a different source, and then it was gone. He relied on it, and it was ripped away. So maybe he wasn’t coping well. Suddenly there were no mysteries to solve, no warm family surrounding him, no soft body curling up to him every night with a giggle of “cold feet, Juggie!”

There was a different kind of adoration. Publishers knocking at his door, fat checks in the mail, his social media lauded with adoring fans. He’d convinced himself it was just as good as the other kind. 

He’d failed to realize how conditional it would be. 

He blackens the part of his life that is Riverdale. He has to because if he didn’t he’d remember. He’d remember a prom with a body pressed against his and their whole lives ahead of them, the burning urge to propose right at that very moment. And he’d remember his girlfriend’s best friend slapping her in the face and the betrayal that still occupies a part of him that’s bigger than he’d like it to be, seven years later. 

He’d remember how cold, and how very alone he was, even with a desperate hand clinging to his and tears and sobbed apologies and her begging him not to leave and just how wildly fucked up it was that all he wanted was to take her into his arms and comfort her. 

No, best to forget. 

He tries to remember college as the best time of his life, but he’s not sure it ever was. He’s smart. He studies and he graduates. His father is proud, his sister visits. He writes fluff pieces for magazines, and he meets Jessica. 

And now he’s here, broke and uninspired. 

His life is so devoid of serendipity that he hesitates to think of it as anything when his father calls. 

Only a few words of that call will stick out to him after he hangs up. 

“ _ Know you’re probably busy….got this case…..two murder, unrelated…..need your help….can you come?”  _

* * *

  
  


He asks her out again. 

She tells him no again. 

It’s a cycle that is largely representative of her life now. Work. Home. Work. Home. Wash, rinse, repeat. She hastens to call it boring. She solves cases, finds missing family members. Sometimes, she reunites family when she’s lucky, and when she’s not, she gives closure. She has friends. 

Washington is a change, an exciting one. Betty is a junior agent. She’s young, they say. She has a promising career ahead of her. 

“And like every good agent, no work/life balance,” one of her superiors chuckles.

She has friends. They go out sometimes for drinks. She’s not lonely, not really. She’s satisfied and fulfilled. She’s happy. Except, much like every overconfident man, her colleague Agent Steven Bennett thinks she’d be happier if they were dating. He’s not her type, she says again and again, and over and over, he insists that he could be. 

“You don’t date enough for a girl who looks like you, Coop,” he says. 

He’s wrong. She does. Several mid-length relationships would beg to differ. She’s got a house, a job, a few good friends. She’s done well for herself, and she’s good at what she does. Many people make their lives their careers. And if at the end of the day, what she has to show for her life is reunited families and more not clinging to false hope, she’s done well. 

Washington was a nice change. She’s recruited right out of college, so seven years had gone by in a flash. She’d dedicated herself to her studies. She goes home occasionally. Stays in a hotel, meets, greets. Her mother and FP are doing well. Last Betty had heard, they were all but married, heavily involved in Juniper and Dagwood’s lives. Polly was still gone. She trailed back every so often, wanted to see the twins. Betty supervises one such visit. It’s awkward, fiercely so. Her sister still looks every bit a cult member, despite The Farm being long disbanded. She forces affection on the twins, brings them dolls of twine and hay, holds them in uncomfortable hugs. Aunt Betty is not the most familiar person to them, but they cling to her and look miserable, something Polly doesn’t even seem to notice. 

Cheryl still visits her. Betty hasn’t learned to unclench Cheryl yet, but she learns to appreciate her vivacious cousin. Toni and Cheryl had broken up about two years ago, and since then, Cheryl has been traveling, leaving a trail of broken-hearted women in her wake. 

Betty’s loathe to say anything, especially the way it ended for her. 

It’s a scene she vividly remembers. Her on her knees, begging, pleading, clinging to his legs. 

_ Please don’t go; I’m so sorry, I love you, please let me fix this. It’s fixable; I can fix it! _

It wasn’t, and she couldn’t. It makes her almost angry, because wasn’t that pain supposed to fade over time? Wasn’t it supposed to get better? If anything, she just sort of gets used to the pain, and learns to live in the “it is what it is” philosophy. 

So, she has her job, a few friends, and overly flirty coworkers. And that’s enough. 

It’s enough until the day a superior calls her into their office and tells her there’s been an FBI request to consult on a small town, and didn’t she say she was from Riverdale?

She tries to turn it down, but it is only ostensibly a request. She’s going back to Riverdale on an FBI sponsored trip to solve a double murder. Her heart pounds as it hasn’t done in years, and she damns these particular killers more than the garden-variety ones she sees every day, as the car pulls away towards Dulles. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Veronica breathes deeply, runs through the same sentences in her head, her eyes tightly shut and her head bowed. 

_ He cares. He’s kind. He’s not pushing; he wants a life with you.  _

It’s at least the eighth time they’ve had this fight. It always starts the same, same words, same resolution. Every time, Veronica breathes deep, tries to remember the good.

He is kind, her husband. He loves her. Maybe it’s her that’s unreasonable. After all, this is something many women in their mid-twenties want. 

Perhaps, then, all women in their mid-twenties feel this indefinable panic, this block they can’t skip over, that prevents the outcome from being the one her husband wants. 

She blames the crash over and over. She blames the crash for her not wanting children, not now. 

She  _ doesn’t  _ seem to blame the crash for the scars, or the nightmares, or the inability to trust anyone. 

Just the lack of desire to procreate. 

It’s an easy thing to blame on the crash. Physically, nothing is standing in their way. Veronica is successful. Owning three separate businesses, money is not tight. Chad has money, too. He’d wooed her since Barnard. He’s safe, and kind, and easy. That’s how she needs it right now. 

Her life is her business and Chad. She’s respected in the business world. New York has always felt like home or some version of it. She quickly made a name for herself, right out of college. Barnard was such a  _ wide _ world, and she threw herself into it. She makes Riverdale a thing of the past, a mere stepping stone of experience to the world of business. She learns to like being alone. She discovers the old Veronica, the Veronica she tried to leave behind. 

She tried it, but Veronica was betrayed on the most basic levels, and that kind of hurt is never something she will repeat. The old Veronica was better. The old Veronica hurt less. She couldn’t be lonely if she surrounded herself with people, so she did. 

And then there was Chad. He was handsome and simple and rich and easy. 

It was all so easy. He swept her off her feet, and then he asked her to marry him. 

People always said nobody knew what a commitment marriage was until they were in it. She thinks that may be true. Their wedding was lavish. People packed the hall and danced long into the night. Her father nods approvingly at her new husband, and Chad spun Veronica round and round as she laughed.

She still remembers that laughter now. She holds onto that during moments like this, moments where she tells Chad for the thousandth time that she’s just not  _ ready _ to have kids. He doesn’t understand, he never has, but she can’t explain further. It’s an odd sensation but thinks she’ll know when he’s ready.

It used to be easy to distract Chad, but it’s getting harder now. They take more breaks from each other now, but those breaks are more and more needed. It’s one such time, now. She’s even grateful for the shrill ring of her phone, and her mother’s stern voice on the other end, remembering the visit home her father had booked. 

She kisses her husband goodbye, sends a businesslike email to her assistant informing him of how long she’ll be gone, and her and her empty uterus head towards Riverdale. 

* * *

  
  


It’s not as hard as he thought it’d be. 

It’s just lonelier than he thought. 

Only at first, though. He tacks up a picture of his father in his barracks and is shocked when he receives no criticism. He looks at it every day, and some days, he swears he sees his father’s eyes follow him and smile. 

Army officers are good, righteous, and true. Everything he was called at one point, so he fits in easily. After the jail experience, the bear attack, the Stonies, everything high school had thrown at him; he breezes through basic with an ease that makes his bunkmates jealous. He makes fast friends, some that even remind him of his friends back home, back before everything fell apart. 

The best is Private Jed Marsden. Jed is blonde, tall, and muscular. He joins the ranks a year after Archie, and they bond over gym sessions. It’s nice, having someone there all the time. He doesn’t feel lonely some of the time. He thinks his father would have like Jed. He’s a small-town boy, born and bred from a farm in Utah, one he talks of with wistfulness in his eyes. His girlfriend still lives there, he says. She’ll wait for him, and then they’ll get married and make a life in that same town. He’ll take over the farm, have children, raise them to know the value of hard work. It makes Archie’s chest ache with longing as well. It sounds like a good life, a simple, hardworking life. The life he wants. The life he could have had, maybe, once upon a time. 

He thinks Fred would have liked Jed. He’s genuine, like Archie. They’re assigned to the same tasks, same barracks, same basic. They strive for identical posts. Some of the guys in the bunk affectionately refer to them as husbands, but it doesn’t bother Archie. He likes the companionship. 

He makes his way up the rankings quickly. He’s allowed to see the world through the Army. He purposely takes protective posts - no combat if he can avoid it. Some of the posts are painfully boring, but he makes it. He flies home to see his mother whenever possible, spends time with her and her new wife. Riverdale still feels like a warm hug. He can feel his father all around, but also...he can’t stay. It’s just different now.

Seven years in the Army later, and he doesn’t regret it, even as the people moan about the conditions, haze Marines even while commiserating with them as they complain that their weekly group training was particularly painful. 

( _ “Gunny made us jump into the fucking pool in full gear, Andrews!” _ )

He’s satisfied. He’ll go home eventually, but for now, he’s content. 

Or he is, until gets a stumbling call from his mother, the most salient points of which are  _ small tumor _ ,  _ probably operable _ , and  _ please try not to worry,  _ and before he knows it, he’s on a commercial plane bound for the place he used to call home. 

* * *

  
  


It’s the two of them that come back first. The important ones. She smiles. Almost too easy. 

They step off their respective transport and look around nervously. Good instincts, she thinks. They  _ should  _ be nervous. The next person to fall will fall in two days, and that idiot sheriff will know nothing. He’ll do nothing. 

The plan is in place. The ball is rolling, and she couldn’t be happier. 

Her companion had been watching the broken clock today. He looked nervous, though he’d never admit it. She’s not sure why. A thrill shoots through her as she thinks of the plan. It warms her from the inside, a strange sensation given the context, but she smiles. 

_ Tick, tick tick.  _ She counts off ten beats before she allows herself to leave, back to work. Back to normality, back to her cover. 

A twist of irony, she thinks as she pushes the door open—a new spin on the old adage.

Divided they stand, together, they will fall. 

* * *

_come away, little lost_

_come away to the water_


	2. like rain on a tin roof

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s about to reencounter the very things he has tried for over half a decade to leave behind. Surely that warrants a little liquid calm. Surely he’d do better solving this case if he got some sleep if the permanent knot in his stomach was gone. And it didn’t even have to be that much. It’s not like he’d need it again. Just one time, one tiny nip, and he could sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....this is 6000 words. 
> 
> But it's all planned out! Damn, this thing is going to kill me if all chapters are like this.

_ I can’t say I lost  
I can’t say I’ve gained  
Cause every possession has only remained  
I wish I could lose  
Something so dear  
At least then I’d know there was a time it was here _

* * *

It’d long been a theory of Jughead’s that Riverdale existed in its own universe. Stagnant and unchanging as the world changed around it, Riverdale was a world unto itself. It was nigh on a shock, sometimes, that there  _ was  _ a world outside of Riverdale, a world of cars beyond station wagons and old trucks, of diners that didn’t look eternally 50 years out of date, of technology that had existed for a shorter time period than Jughead had been alive. And stepping back into Riverdale, that is the theory that comes rushing back to him. 

The bus light sign flickers as he stumbles off his bus. He wobbles a bit on his feet, only having had a fraction of a bagel and a tiny nip of vodka as breakfast this morning, synthetic courage needed to make the journey back. It’s a journey back that’ll be unlike the others, and he knows it.

His dad had asked. That was why he was going. In the past, trips to Riverdale, occasional as they were, were carefully planned. Information on exactly who was there was gleaned, social media was surreptitiously checked, and caution was taken to ensure there would be no awkwardly running into...anyone. 

The bus station’s light gleams as Jughead stumbles off toward his father’s waiting truck, careful to smooth his steps out as much as possible. It’s a peaceful night, starry and calm, but he feels anything but calm. Before, there was always an exit strategy. He’s here for a defined time, and then he’s out. Now it’s different, and he shivers despite the warm summer air. 

He’s insisted on staying in a hotel, as he always does. His father picks him up and has, before, tried to convince him to stay at home. 

“Finally got a house, boy,” he says. “No need to stay in a cold hotel when you got your family right there.” 

There  _ is _ a need, though. He’d tried to stay at home, once. He estimates he slept maybe an hour that first night because it wasn’t  _ his  _ room, and had never been. Even when he was living there, it was theirs. And that is something he has spent seven years trying to divorce himself of as much as possible. 

So he books a hotel, and it’s still cold, like his father said, but it’s easier. He expects the bed to be cold and empty, so it’s not an immediate heartbreak upon waking. 

FP claps him on the back heartily and drives him to the hotel. They sit on the bed together and talk, going over business and personal. In case notes, he learns that the murders seem to be in no way connected. No family connections, no workplace, gym, or grocery store in common, no way the victims could be in any way connected. Just two seemingly innocent people, a blonde man, and a brunette woman, gored to death and laid out surrounded by black feathers. Crime scene photographs show their faces permanently twisted into expressions of fear, as if they had spent the split second before death seeing something unspeakable. 

Jughead gathers as much physical evidence as he can from his father - FP had already had it ready, telling him to “do whatever it is you used to do with it, boy.” 

He almost smiles at the callback to his investigative days, but it slips when he remembers. It was never just him laying out the murder boards in his investigative days. 

He tosses and turns as his father leaves, sweating. He knows what he needs, but he doesn’t  _ need _ it. He knows what would soothe his mind and his nerves. It’s hardly a shock that he’s nervous, isn’t it? 

He’s about to reencounter the very things he has tried for over half a decade to leave behind. Surely that warrants a little liquid calm. Surely he’d do better solving this case if he got some sleep if the permanent knot in his stomach was gone. And it didn’t even have to be that much. It’s not like he’d need it again. Just one time, one tiny nip, and he could sleep. 

The bottle is already ready, stashed at the bottom of his bag. It burns going down but it’s a feeling he relishes. The world blurs a little at the corners and he finally stumbles into sleep. 

* * *

  
  


Her mother hugs her tightly as soon as she pulls in. 

She always starts on Elm Street, and maybe there’s some masochism in that. Start with the most challenging part. Start with the house she grew up in, the place her father the serial killer lived, the place that, for eight scant months, had been a house with a family, surrounded by warmth and love, before one kiss blew everything up. 

She’d tried, once, to stay in the room she grew up in for the duration of her visit. During the third panic attack of the night, she manages to book a hotel room because she can’t. The room has been vacant for years, but clearly, that’s not enough time, because she’s still awash in memories. She still hears sounds when she closes her eyes - moans and gasps and giggles from the time this bed was  _ theirs _ . 

She manages a choked “Juggie” and is somehow surprised when there is no response. It’s the first time she’s dared say his name in a long time, and it shatters something inside her, a fragile sense of  _ okay _ that she had spent years building. 

So now she frequents (perhaps frequents is a misnomer as she’s rarely back) the tiny hotel on the edge of town, as far away from everything as she can get. She starts with Elm Street because it’s important to her mother. And sometimes she sees FP, which is not nearly as awkward as she had once anticipated. He wraps her in a hug, and it feels nice, but she still can’t look him in the eye without being reminded of someone else. 

The twins live with relatives, still in Riverdale. Alice is involved heavily in their lives. Betty knows it’s primarily because she loves them, but also, there is a note of grief in their interactions, a longing for the twins’ mother. Polly had never recovered from the Farm, not truly, and now she flitted in and out, dabbling in different things all too similar to Edgar Evernever’s cult. Betty knew how hard her mother had tried, how much everyone tried to make Polly better, for them, for her children, but it was for naught. The small comfort came in the fact that she was alive, and her children were loved and cared for. 

Not enough, but it was something. Betty visits with them, allows their squeals of “Aunt Betty!” to fill her up, to validate that at least, someone in Riverdale wasn’t looking at her for who she was, for what she’d done. 

* * *

The waiting room was empty, as Archie sat and twiddled his thumbs. There was a stack of magazines on the table in front of him, but he didn’t feel much like reading. 

Mary had been very clear that they didn’t worry unless there was something to worry about, and as of now, there wasn’t. Archie tries to take that philosophy. His mother seems happy. Brooke is kind to him, always had been. She’s even been a sort of mentor to him in his army career, sharing things with Archie that Mary didn’t understand. His mother smiled and walked away when the tangent, yet again, turned to army topics, but he’s glad to have this in common with his stepmother.

He has long since stopped assuming the hole his father left will close in time, and more come to accept that it will always be there, but the pain won’t always be so acute. That seems to be the way it is thus far. He doesn’t miss his father any less, he doesn’t wish he was here any less. But he feels, at the very least, okay. 

He fills the time as he waits by laughing at the images Jed sends him, still grateful for his friend, until Brooke leads him back to where his mother lies, bandaged but awake. Mary Andrews smiles at her son, clasps her wife’s hand, and assures him that she’s fine, truly no need to worry. But Archie’s dial is turned to worry immediately when the only parent he has left is in the hospital. He paces, hovers, and generally drives his mother crazy until she finally cracks. 

“You know what, Arch? I could use some Pops right now. Do you mind?”

It’s a dismissal, but it’s a task, and he grasps onto it with both hands. It’s a job, it’s something he can do. So he calls in an order to Pops, and sets out. 

* * *

She doesn’t see her parents as soon as she gets back. Were it up to her, she wouldn’t see her parents at all, but that never has and will never be an option. She is here on a guilt trip, one they’ve been pulling since she was a teen. 

Riverdale doesn’t have much in the way of fancy accommodation, but she can’t breathe at home, so even by less than decadent standards, the hotel is an escape. A place of relative safety, one she can hide out in for the time being. 

Her eyes water, and Veronica flops down onto the bed, drawing in a shaky breath. It’s quiet here. That’s a double edged sword if ever there was. She relishes the quiet for a moment. No business responsibilities, no guilt trips from her loving husband, no aquaintances calling to check in. Just her. 

_ In. Out. In. Out _ . Veronica counts her breaths, cursing the tears that fall. It’s a display of emotion nobody sees, and yet it still feels like a failure. It still feels like they’re taking something from her. 

Chad, her father, even her colleagues. Veronica scrambles sometimes to define what is truly her and what has been made of her by others. 

And that’s more than a little scary, because the place she felt most herself was here, in Riverdale. But that ended in flames, and she’s not sure she can face a hurt like that again. 

  
  


Pops also check the “not the same” box. Pop Tate himself had died a year ago, an event only matched in Riverdale’s communal grief by Fred Andrews’ death. It was natural, his family said. He was elderly. The town gathered for a memorial, and he was quietly buried with only his family present. Betty missed him still - his warm eyes, his gentle laugh, the way he just seemed to know when she needed an extra milkshake. 

She hadn’t been back since. Like her room, Pops was assaulted by memories, memories that could once have been happy, had she not screwed everything up. 

But it’s a day of slipping back into the past, so perhaps it’s only fitting that she goes back to Pops today. 

The same old bell rings as Betty pushes open the door. 

_ Get in, grab your takeout order, get out _ . That’s all she had to do. Just get her food and go. Not see anyone, not talk to anyone, get the food and beat a hasty retreat. Not look at the booth where she’d spent so many nights poring over evidence, or laughing over milkshakes, or cuddling into her boyfriend’s warm chest. Don’t look at it, don’t ever allow yourself to remember, that’s what she tells herself. 

And in the not looking, she clearly can’t see what’s right in front of her. It figured, then, that this is exactly the time she’d run head first into the solid chest of a man. Even more so that she’d freeze up when she heard a familiar voice say her name hesitantly. 

“...Betty?”

_ Oh shit, oh shit _ , her mind gasps, not ready to process the voice and presence of one Archie Andrews. The not talking to anyone from her past had been  _ intentional.  _ It was the only thing that kept the flood of memories out. 

After she and Jughead broke up, after the hours-long fight of screaming and crying and begging, she was alone. She hadn’t realized she would be, before. More specifically, she hadn’t realized what Jughead was to her. Jughead was a part of her, and that part had been torn off, thanks to her own decisions. Without him, Betty wasn’t sure who she was anymore.

Thus began weeks of the blackest grief Betty had ever known. Weeks of panic attacks, and being twisted up on the bed, having her mother force liquid into her. Archie tried to call her, text her, knock on her window, visit. Betty turned him away every time. It wasn’t even him, she knew. It was her, her who had messed this all up, her who had broken the heart of the one person who had always been there for her. But Archie - he was and forever would be inextricably tied to that experience, so no, she couldn’t see him. 

Two weeks after graduation, two solid weeks of crying her heart out, she had finally stood up and Betty Cooper-d her way out. She dried her eyes, methodically packed up her clothes, hugged her mother goodbye, and left. She studiously avoided thinking of anyone or anything from back in Riverdale. 

Now, not a day after she’s back, she is face to face with Archie Andrews, and she’s not ready for that. 

He’s looking at her, his face the same as it was seven years ago, and she can barely meet his eyes. He looks the same, from what she can see. A bit more muscular, maybe. More tan, but essentially, the same all-American quarterback he’d always been. 

“Archie.” 

He inclines his head to meet her eyes better. She doesn’t want to look at him. “How...how are you?”

“Fine.” (She’s not. Not while she’s here. Not while all she can hear in her head is  _ this is nice  _ intermixed with Jughead’s teary  _ I thought you loved me. _ )

He nods, shifting back on the balls of his feet. He’s searching for something to say, she can see it. 

“You’re back? You’re back in Riverdale?” It’s a fair thing to be curious about, Betty supposes. She hasn’t been back in years, but really, he’s a part of the reason for that. 

“Just to consult. FBI.”

His eyebrows lift. “You’re an FBI agent?”

She gives a short nod. He whistles low, his face a mask of surprise. 

“How’d you...get into that?”

“Criminology major. They recruited me.” 

In a different era, this would hurt, this distance between them. This gaping chasm that estranged her from her oldest friend and left them with nothing to talk about. But she dropped the bomb that created this space, and he wasn’t the only casualty. On a base level, perhaps she still blames him, though by no means does she shirk her responsiblity. 

Betty’s never been so grateful to see a Pops employee as a young woman comes over to her at a decided bounce and hands Betty her bag of takeout. She’s pretty, caramel skin and wide eyes, a lollipop stick hanging from her mouth. 

“Sorry about the wait, folks. Any strategies to light a fire under the asses of cooks who have been here longer than I’ve been alive?”

It breaks the tension with a small fraction of levity, and it gets Archie’s eyes off her. He smiles at the girl, ever effortlessly friendly, and makes small talk about the cooks that have been around for years. That’s Archie, through and through. A Riverdale boy. 

Betty doesn’t think she was able to breathe until she left Riverdale. 

Still smiling, the girl turns to Betty. “Anyway, here’s your food. Betty Cooper?” 

Betty nods. “That’s me.” 

The girl grins. “Tabitha Tate. I believe you knew my grandfather?”

The thought of Pop Tate sends another pang through Betty, and she sees a similar mournful expression on Archie’s face. 

“I did. I’m...I’m sorry about what happened.” 

The girl’s eyes shine, but she waves a hand. “None of that, especially not from the famous Betty Cooper. Gramps talked about you all the time. He sure loved you guys.”

Betty manages a sad smile. “The feeling was mutual.” 

The girl nods. “Well, takeout is takeout for a reason. I know I don’t know any of you, but you seem to spend a  _ lot _ of time here. And much as I’m a fan of tense reunions, maybe my diner isn’t the place. So,” Tabitha throws an arm around Archie, heading him to the door. 

“Out you go, Ed Sheeran. Something tells me you’ll be back.” 

* * *

  
  


Jughead knows where he’s going, and he knows it’s the right place to set up. Nonetheless, he steels himself with a few deep breaths and a single nip of Stoli before descending down the steps. One slips from under his grasp, but his hands catch tightly to right himself. 

It takes a few minutes to adjust to the smell. He had thought that he’d become pretty accustomed to it during the weeks he lived there, moreseo during the many nights spent there for a modicum of privacy, but the bunker hasn’t been used in years and it shows. 

He supposes when he and everyone else left it had served its purpose. More than one, in fact. The bunker had become a catch all of sorts for anything, and he thinks it could do with a deep bleaching, but still, it’s the best option for what he needs. 

He hadn’t expected it to be so unchanged, though. Nor, really, did he expect the flow of memories that overwhelm him as he sits down, legs shaking, on the bed. Once, the bunker seemed like a safe place. Now it seems like an extension of the room on Elm Street. The walls, bed and every single thing in the room scream  _ Betty, Betty, Betty.  _

He clamps his hands nonsensically over his ears to drown them out. It’s a song he has spent every waking moment of the last seven years trying to forget, but here, he can’t. Here, all he can picture is blonde hair, green eyes and a soft smile. He can still hear her gasps and moans of “ _ Juggie _ ” as they made the most of their stolen time together. 

Again and again, he repeats the same words.  _ It’s over. You’re done. She betrayed you. You don’t love her anymore.  _

It’s a logical progression of words, a perfectly reasonable stream of thoughts. It’d been seven years. He’d moved on, he had a girlfriend. Maybe. And it was over. They’d been apart longer than they’d been together, so it was perfectly ridiculous to hold any kind of latent feelings for Betty, be they anger or...anything else. 

That, however, did not explain the chill that took over his entire body when his father begrudgingly admitted that his office had called in an FBI consult.

“They got the resources we just don’t have, Jug,” he had said. “I had no control over who they assigned.” 

He hadn’t needed to say much more than that. 

Admittedly, Jughead had been doing a fairly poor job at  _ not _ keeping track of Betty after everything. Most days, he sent up a prayer of thanks that all her social medias were still public, so he could just...look, every now and then. He knew that she had been accepted into the FBI, and he knew what that would mean to her, especially after everything with Charles. 

And despite everything, he was proud of her. Despite all that had happened, she deserved this. 

So when his father had haltingly told him about the FBI arriving in town, he knew what that would mean. And because of that, he schools his brain carefully, repeating the same words over and over. 

_ It’s over. You’re done. She betrayed you. You don’t love her anymore.  _

They can be coworkers. He can see her, and with enough time, can reach neutrality. 

Then, now and as always, the world seems against him, because at that moment, he hears the distinctive sound of the bunker’s hatch opening, and soft foosteps on the stairs. 

At that moment, he curses that fact that there is only one exit in an underground bunker, because it’s been seven years, but he knows who it is, and he’s not ready for it. 

His name comes on a soft exhalation, just like it used to sound, and his heart thumps madly. He tries so badly to conjure up images of Jessica. Her smile, her laugh, her soft hair running through his fingers. But no matter what he tries, the hair turns blonde, the eyes turn green, and his hands ache to reach out.

But it’s seven years later, and that’s over. He doesn’t love her anymore. She is a coworker. Nothing more, nothing less. And in a few weeks they will leave Riverdale, and that will be the last they see of each other, so he can be professional about this. 

* * *

He looks mostly the same. It’s like being transported to seven years ago, back in Riverdale, in the bunker, in front of a murder board waiting to be built, with Jughead Jones standing in front of her. It sends a knife straight through her, because it could so easily be seven years ago. She could so easily have not met Archie, or kissed Archie. 

Maybe, if she hadn’t, they would have gone to college together. Maybe they would have gotten married because they were only college students but they’d known since they were five that they’d want to be together forever. Maybe they’d live in a tiny apartment that smelled and they could barely make rent, but it didn’t matter because they were together. 

But she had kissed Archie, and she had blown everything up. And now they were what they were. 

His name slips out and she barely realizes, but it makes him look up. His back is tense, but his blue eyes meet hers for the first time in seven years, and everything comes back. 

(They don’t get another moment alone together until the next day. Polly is still missing, as is the evidence, and Betty is allowed to attend school and nothing else. It’s okay, because school has the Blue and Gold and that is where Jughead Jones, her friend since she was five, stands in front of her. 

He’d kissed her yesterday, for the first time. And it was like something woke up inside of her. Now she stands in front of someone she’s known her entire life but the flipping in her stomach and the blush that pinks her cheeks is very new. 

For once, in all the time they’ve known each other, she can’t think of anything to say to him. 

He seems to have the opposite reaction. “Look, Betty, you don’t have to say anything, it was sudden, I know, I shouldn’t have...done that, but I…” He breaks off, looks at her with such searching in his eyes. 

“Something just came over me and I couldn’t fight it, but we can just forget it ever happened, and -” 

That’s as far as she lets him get before she lifts her hands to his cheeks and presses her mouth to his. 

The effect is the same. Everything around her, the loud, chaotic world that spins on right outside their door, falls away. It’s quiet and lovely and she just  _ feels _ . 

Throughout their relationship, that is what Jughead does for her. He quiets the world around her.) 

She’s not entirely sure that wasn’t a different life, or a different Jughead. This Jughead in front of her looks the same, but nothing about him is. 

The way he looks at her is different, and that nearly bowls her over with agony. His eyes are hard, his brow is furrowed, and there is nothing there resembling her sweet, kind Jughead. 

Because he’s not hers anymore. 

Now, he spits out her name, tells her he heard they were working together, and it sounds like a bad thing. After all the investigations conducted together, it sounds like they are being forced together, because they are. 

She doesn’t know Jughead like this. She doesn’t know the Jughead that tells her they’ll be coworkers, nothing more. 

She steps closer. It’s stupid. They have little space to begin with, and she nearly runs into the murderboard supplies. It stops her for a minute, because it’s like  _ being _ back in the past. Like she’s the Betty of seven years ago, plotting a murderboard on a bunker wall and setting alarms to the absolute last minute she had to leave her boyfriend’s warm arms. If she closes her eyes for only a second, she can still feel how safe she felt then, head on his chest and his lips pressing occasional kisses into her hair. 

_ Coworkers _ . Betty had coworkers. None of them had been to her what Jughead was. 

“But, Jug…” 

“But,  _ nothing _ , Betty,” Jughead says. His voice is hard, and it’s never been hard before. Not even during the breakup, he’s never spoken to her like a stranger. Like someone he doesn’t trust. 

“You’re FBI, I’m consulting. We are coworkers. We don’t need to be any more than that. In point of fact, we  _ won’t _ be any more than that.”

It’s just hard for her to understand. It’s hard to comprehend how that could just be gone, even after seven years away. 

He’s not done, though. 

“That means we don’t talk unless it’s about the case, I use your work cell phone to call you, and we keep each other updated. But we don’t spend time together.”

Work cell phone. It drives the knife in deeper. It seems like the most frivolous thing, but her mind flashes back to endless criminology memes that she used to receive from Jughead, or an essay of a text explaining one of his theories in detail, or even the text in the wee hours in the morning, just when she needed it, with a little heart and an  _ I love you. _

“We can’t just ignore what we were…” she tries, but he shakes his head. Idly, she notices he’s not wearing his beanie. His legs shake a bit too, but she attributes that to emotion and rather cramped quarters. 

“We can, and we will. Because whatever we were is over. We aren’t that anymore.”

He sticks a pin into the board with force. Betty says nothing else, just sits down on the bed, opens her case folder, and casts her eyes away. 

* * *

His father looks to be bursting with emotion when Jughead finally slides into the diner seat beside him. 

Pops looks exactly the same, a relic in time always. It’s not relaxing, not in any way, because nothing about this is relaxing. But the milkshake that the dark haired girl sucking on a lollipop slides toward him is still well timed, and that’s comforting on a surface level, especially considering the day he’s had. 

The day that involves Betty re-entering the contacts on his phone. She’s marked down as Agent Cooper, and he doesn’t even know how to process that. 

Work phone or not, Betty occupies a very small space in his phone, the only space aside from the tiny folder that’s saved in the innermost recesses of his drive, containing some things he just couldn’t get rid of, and very much didn’t want to think about. 

But his dad is practically vibrating, and it spills out as soon as Jughead takes a single sip of milkshake. 

He and Alice are engaged, and he’s been offered a job. 

Those two things, apparently, coexist. 

He’s getting married to the mother of Jughead’s ex, and he’s also considering leaving town.

There’s a whole explanation, involving  _ we’re gonna get married quick, nothin’ fancy,  _ and  _ she’s gonna wrap up things here then come join me _ , and it’s all a bit much.

The sum of it, he hears, is that there will be a wedding, small as it is, and Jughead will be in the wedding party. 

(Presumably, so will Betty.) 

And then his father will be leaving Riverdale. 

It’s a bit too much on top of the day, and it must show, because his father regards him and asks if he’s okay. There’s a bit too much perception in FP’s eyes, but Jughead is an investigator, and thus, he’s always been a good liar. 

He tells his father he’s excited for him (he is). And that he’s supportive if FP wants to leave town.

(It’s rougher, but he’s still happy for his father.) 

The milkshake nearly melts as his father goes on and on about the wedding, face shining with happiness in a way Jughead nearly forgot something could. 

* * *

She thought she was safe. Every time, before she leaves, she carefully applies her Veronica Lodge coat of protection - artful makeup, flawlessly pressed clothing, string of pearls, the latest in fashion. It presents who she is to the world, and it’s an awfully easy thing to hide behind. Nobody tries probing further, and the mask never slips. 

Except, as with all things, in Riverdale. 

In Riverdale, everything is different. She’s different, she supposes, though she doesn’t want to be. She look around every corner, analyses every situation before entering it, and, above everything, she avoids anyone she may know, or used to know. 

She approaches it with the same thoroughfare that she approaches everything, but it’s Riverdale. 

So of course, the first time she slips into Pops, just to grab an order for takeout, she thinks she’s safe. The cook informs her that the food will take a few minutes, and that is when her heart starts to pound. She shouldn’t have come to Pops. Too central, too familiar. Too many memories, it threatens to overwhelm the mask she created, the one she is  _ fine  _ under. 

She has what she needs, and she is fine. 

It  _ is _ taking a bit long though. Veronica doesn’t want to be one to complain, but Pops typically isn’t slow, and she burns with the urge to leave here as soon as possible. 

At long last, an employee hands her a bag of food and tells her she’s sorry, that it always takes a bit more time when someone is paying for another person’s food. It’s a wholly confusing statement, because Veronica has her credit card at the ready and she hadn’t asked anyone to pay for her food. She says as much to the girl, who nods over to a corner booth and tells her that “the redhead said he’d pay.” 

Veronica’s heart was beating at double time before, but the words speed her heartbeat to a pace where she’s shocked it doesn’t come flying right out of her chest. 

Surely, there is more than one redhead in Riverdale. Certainly, the redhead she’s thinking of is not the sum total of redheads in Riverdale. Definitely, it’s not who she’s thinking of. 

But then she hears the voice. 

The voice says “Ronnie,” and the mask cracks. So many emotions swirl around her that she has no control over them, no ability to distinguish a single one. 

Her entire world freezes and is transported back seven years ago, to a prom, and a dance, and the boy who had told her that she was his forever.

It was a lie. It was the worst kind of lie, because then he kissed her best friend. The two people she clung to, both betraying her. So anger takes hold in her emotions. It’s anger that had simmered for seven years, and her spine straightens, fists clenching. 

The boy in question appears in front of her, more muscled than before, but his eyes are the same. Soft and unassuming, he looks at her tentatively. 

“ _ Archibald _ ,” she spits out. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

He looks taken aback, but only slightly. “I thought...I thought we could talk,” he says. “It’s been a long time.”

She hmms. “With no contact. Did you ever consider that was intentional?”

“Look, Ronnie, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it a thousand times, I’m so sorry -”

“Sorry? You’re sorry, and you think that’s enough?”

“I don’t know what  _ will  _ be enough, I’m just -”

“I  _ trusted  _ you!” she shouts. Oh yes, now anger is dominant, but she doesn’t mind, because it sings through her veins, it powers her, it gives her the strength to stand before the boy who broke her heart. 

“With everything, I trusted you! I was ready to go anywhere with you, and you kissed my best friend and didn’t even think about me! That’s not a sorry conversation, Archie! You broke me, and there is nothing you could ever say that would make up for that.”

It’s as dignified as she’s going to get while yelling at her ex in a diner, so she turns on her heel and flees. She makes it as far as the front steps before there are tears, but luckily, he doesn’t chase her. 

In fact, it’s more than a few minutes before the bell rings and someone steps out onto the stoop. She knows it’s not Archie when she hears a low whistle, and someone settling in beside her. 

“Hell of a big fight,” says a pretty, dark haired girl. “Had to sneak him out the back, and I haven’t done that in awhile.”

Swiping under her eyes, Veronica takes a breath and composes herself as best she can, turns herself back into Veronica Lodge. 

“Thanks,” she says. “I’m...sorry about that.” 

The girl shrugs her shoulders. “Eh, who among us hasn’t had an awkward run in with an ex? I’m just glad yours didn’t break any furniture. That puts you above my loving reunion with Stephen at the IKEA. Man, that was one expensive fit.” 

It coaxes a tiny smile out of Veronica, and the girl smiles back. Jumping to her feet, she extends a hand to help Veronica up. 

“Come on,”she says. “Crowd has cleared out, and everyone knows the cure for an emotional confrontation is a good milkshake. I have it on excellent authority that I make a killer one.”

Sniffling, Veronica accepts her hand. The girl’s smile is wide and genuine, the shine in her eyes harkening Veronica back to a simpler time. A time she was allowed to have a friend, let alone a best friend. 

“Thanks. I don’t think I caught your name.” 

The girl lays a hand dramatically over her eyes and gives an exaggerated swoon. “Well, we can’t have that.” 

She reaches out her hand, clasps Veronica’s and gives it a firm shake. “Tabitha Tate, at your service. Also known as your new friend. I know we just met, but I have a good feeling about this. Give me time, and I could talk you into new best friend.” 

It sends a pang through Veronica, but she manages a smile. “I don’t know. In my experiences, best friends tend to be backstabbing Judases that I’d be happy to never hear from again.” 

“Oh, open your heart to love again, Veronica,” Tabitha grins. “You may be surprised.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


She shouldn’t have been walking by Pops. She wouldn’t have, she should have been home compiling case notes, but Jughead had texted. He had texted her to meet at the bunker. She knows it’s only case related, but it’s Jughead and he had reached out, so she couldn’t say no. 

And thus, she happens by Pops, and there, she sees Veronica. Or more accurately, she first hears her voice, the voice of her former best friend. The one whose voice shouts all the names she calls herself in her dreams. 

This isn’t a dream, though. This is real. In real time, she hears “backstabbing Judas that I’d be happy to never hear from again.” 

She sees her former best friend laughing and grasping the hand of another girl, while talking about her. 

_ Wasn’t it supposed to hurt less? When would time finally heal this? _

Betty ducks her head and refuses to allow the tears, squashes down the waves of panic rising as best she can, spins herself into an alley and rides the panic attack out the same way she did all things, alone. 

* * *

  
  


_ The deed is done. For all the famed murder, Riverdale makes a ridiculously easy target. Its residents don’t even lock their doors.  _

_ She makes quick work out of writing her message. The woman is a bleeder, but she manages. _

_ He takes the other one, and the only complaint she hears is how tacky the design he had to scratch in is. _

_ And sure enough, the next morning, the news reports it.  _

_ Two more victims. Dead, their faces frozen in fear, black feathers scattered all around. On one, carved into the arm, the words **we know you’re here**.  _

_ On the other, a crude outlining in blood of a crown.  _

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate my job. The end.


	3. in every heart there is a room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bunker’s air is predictably stale, and her muscles smart after sitting for so long. Betty stands and stretches out her back. Jughead keeps his eyes firmly on the papers in front of him, but his back and shoulders are tense, as if he’s trying not to look up. Despite herself, Betty remembers the time spent in this bunker. The two weeks Jughead was stuck here during the Stonewall mess, when she’d had precious few hours to visit him. They’d split their time between sleuthing and...other things. She allowed herself only a night or two to sleep in the bunker, waking up to see Jughead smiling down at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, Hiram and Hermoine Lodge are trash. Well, all of the parents are trash, but we will not be giving the Lodge family the good edit Riverdale so often gives them. 
> 
> Thank you all for your feedback! I am so glad to hear from so many of you that this is your official S5 :) 
> 
> Also s/o to Archie Comics for providing me with a litany of characters I can kill at random. Doing your girl a solid.

_Where do you go when your weakness is showing?_   
_And all of the seeds that you planted are frozen?_   
_Maybe I'm only lying to myself_

* * *

_ Betty _

It’s not like it was. It’s not a Betty-and-Jughead investigation. It  _ can’t _ be, because they are not them anymore. That’s her fault, she knows. 

And if she didn’t, his coldness toward her reminds her of it. 

Jughead speaks to Betty only when necessary, like he said. Her texts to him are met with three words or less in a response (but her heart pounds anyway, unused to seeing his name light up her phone screen). He texts her rarely, and only pertinent information. 

She remembers a time, seven years ago, where his wild conspiracy theories lit up his phone. Now, he is taciturn and abrupt. He gives no details of his personal life, and she’s not prying, but she keeps her ears peeled for mention of a significant other.

Why, she’s not sure. It’s not like anything will ever happen between them again. It’s not like she  _ wants _ it to. She’s moved on. He doesn’t feel that way about her anymore, she doesn’t feel that way about him anymore. It’s simple. They’re done. 

They sit in the bunker, most often in silence. She sneaks glances at him, and he never looks back. 

It’s during one such time, where he is bent over a piece of paper, that she sees it. His hair falls into his face, unencumbered, and she realizes. He hasn’t worn the beanie, that one that she had put into his waiting hand, since she’s seen him. 

“The beanie,” the words are short in the stale air. He’s made it very clear there are no questions about his life, but she needs to scavenge, to find the connection to the Jug she knew. 

“What happened to it?”

“Gone.” is all he says. 

As with most things, she doesn’t have any right to feel hurt, but she does. That beanie was Jughead, her Jug. And again like most things, it’s gone. 

* * *

The last two murder victims are unremarkable. Small town people, a man and a woman. A blonde and a brunette. Betty and Jughead complete the worst part of her job - interviewing the family. Two sets of parents, two spouses, two families sob through their stories about their lost loved one. 

The first victim is a woman. Jessie Stephens. She’s young, a college student. She majored in journalism. Her mother shows Betty a few of her articles. Jessie had a distinctive writer’s voice, passion oozing through every word. Betty pockets one of the articles to keep, both for the board and as a token, something to remind her that her death will not go unpunished. 

The investigation is slow. They hit stalls because as far as they can tell, Jessie Stephens has no connection to the other victim, a Robert Tisch. He’s older, a father of two boys, both college age. Their mother clings to them, stares at them sometimes during the interview process, like she’s searching for their father in his sons’ faces. 

The murder had no witnesses, and the most solid lead they get is a woman who saw an idling car around the crime scene. Betty and Jughead exchange glances. That means little in the grand scheme of things, and they both know it. The feathers surrounding the bodies are taken to the crime lab, but they both expect them to be purchased online, and available from any number of retailers. Their murder board stalls, stagnant. 

There isn’t anything they can connect about these murders. No signature, no target population. The random nature means they don’t know who to protect from a next attempt. It is just about the worst feeling Betty can imagine, professionally, knowing they will likely have to wait until their murderer kills again to have any chance of catching them. Whose life will be taken next?

* * *

Betty and Jughead do absolutely everything they can. They dig through paperwork, they scan police reports, they make an exhaustive list of all the stores, both online and in-person, that sell black feathers, long into the night. It leads nowhere.

The bunker’s air is predictably stale, and her muscles smart after sitting for so long. Betty stands and stretches out her back. Jughead keeps his eyes firmly on the papers in front of him, but his back and shoulders are tense, as if he’s trying not to look up. Despite herself, Betty remembers the time spent in this bunker. The two weeks Jughead was stuck here during the Stonewall mess, when she’d had precious few hours to visit him. They’d split their time between sleuthing and...other things. She allowed herself only a night or two to sleep in the bunker, waking up to see Jughead smiling down at her. 

Thousands of moments, memories, in this bunker, just like that. Memories now that she’ll barely allow herself to have, because she could still be living in that. 

Because there are other memories, in this very bunker. 

The meetings. The clandestine meetings where she had  _ lied _ to her boyfriend, the love of her life. Where she had held Archie’s hand and agreed to meet him and listened to his song. 

Shaking her head, she pulls herself from the memory. It didn’t matter now, anyway. 

* * *

  
  


There is a next murder victim. 

They haven’t identified the body yet, but they get the call. Betty trips over a few stones to the wooded area where the body lies, covered in a sheet. Perhaps it was from living in Riverdale for so long, perhaps her father, she doesn’t know, but she’s become desensitized to finding bodies like this. 

She assesses the scene, talks to a few police officers, and spies Jughead, by the body. She paces up to him, and there is a look that she notices on his face, a look of hesitance that he hasn’t worn since they’ve been back. 

“Betty,” he says, and his voice is softer than it usually is. There’s a caution in it, as his eyes flick between her and the body covered by the sheet. 

It’s Nancy. Betty remembers Nancy Woods. In fact, Betty can’t help but remember Nancy, looking at her now, naked and surrounded by feathers, mouth frozen in fear. 

Nancy was in her class. Betty had played with her from the age of five, her first friend. She can still smell the way Nancy’s house used to smell. She defended Betty when Chuck Clayton told her that bows were for babies. She was the first to send an encouraging message to Betty when she reopened the Blue and Gold. Nancy came up to her after her father was outed as the Black Hood and gave Betty’s hand a reassuring squeeze. 

And now she’s dead, left in the woods like garbage, and Betty needs to call her father and mother, the ones whose kitchen she’s sat in for countless meals. Betty feels her eyes well and furiously blinks back the tears, attempting to school her face into an expression approaching neutral. 

She feels a tentative hand on her back, and then Jughead’s voice, saying her name low and soft. 

But she’s Betty Cooper. She’s an FBI agent. She’s been through worse. She’ll  _ go _ through worse, in the grand scheme of her career. 

So she’s fine. She shakes Jughead’s hand off and swipes a frantic hand under her eyes. 

“I’m fine,” she says, and she’s proud of how her voice doesn’t shake. “What do we know?”   
  


None the wiser, the police officer briefs her, and she takes it in, but she can feel Jughead’s eyes boring into her the whole time. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Betty the FBI agent holds Mr. and Mrs. Woods as they sob as if their heart is cracking. She has heard these sobs before, too many times. But these aren’t strangers. They’re family, in a strange, Riverdale sort of way. She understands what has been taken away from them more than most of her victims. 

She promises them the same as she promises the rest of the families. That they will do everything they can to find their daughter’s killer, that she won’t rest until they do. 

That turns out not to be a figure of speech, because it’s 5am, and Betty’s fairly certain she’s going permanently cross eyed from looking at the murder board. They’ve long passed sundown, dinner (salad and a burger for her, two burgers and a beer for Jughead) and in the wee hours of the morning, Betty’s not sure how long she can keep her tenuous hold on sanity. 

It’s frustrating, how little they seem to be actually accomplishing. Even Jughead seemed to droop until he finally opens the second beer he’s propped his chin up on. She’d moved some of her childhood photo albums into the bunker, scanning them for pictures of Nancy. Again, she feels Jughead’s eyes on her, but he says nothing. The Woods’ have given them some of Nancy’s belongings, she’s tacked the pertinent documents onto the board. She’s asked Mr. and Mrs. Woods about the other two victims. Nancy’s never met them. Never interacted with them, as far as they can tell. 

Betty heaves a sigh. No motive, no murder weapon, no evidence. These killers know what they’re doing, and for the first time, the murder board isn’t helping. Betty flops onto the bed with a groan, rubbing her eyes with her palms. 

“Haven’t stared at a murderboard in awhile?”

Jughead’s voice startles her. His tone is light, as it has not been since they’ve been back. His teasing tone almost sounds like he’s telling a joke, and for once, it isn’t hostile. She grabs it with both hands. If she closes her eyes, she can pretend it’s seven years ago, and they are in the same bunker, but under different circumstances. It makes her bold, very bold, because she pulls herself up next to Jughead, a reasonable distance from him, on the bed, backs against the wall. 

She exhales hard. “Afraid I am out of practice on the murderboard front.” 

He nods, and she wonders if she’s pushed the moment too far. But when his face comes to face hers, there’s a lightness about it. A smile. 

“What, fancy FBI team has no budget for a board and pins? Kinda flies in the face of everything I know about the Feds.” 

She chances a smile. It’s not returned, but he doesn’t look away. 

“Inefficient, I agree. The whole budget wasted on technology and forensic evidence.”

Jughead gives a hum. “Sounds like a mistake on their part. Though I suspect, with Agent Cooper on their case, they didn’t lack.” 

A compliment. An actual compliment, and Betty rides so high off it, she doesn’t even care if it’s due to sympathy or pity. What slips out of her mouth next is simply honesty.

Betty gives a tiny shake of her head. “Not the same. Even on the good cases….I did my best investigations with you.”

And it’s true. All of them, over the years. From the Case of the Missing Unicorn Eraser in Kindergarten, to the Stonies. As a team, they had always been better. 

She’s not imagining it, she knows it. In many, many replayings of this moment she’ll go through later, he leans closer to her. He’s still parallel, but the moment is charged and they’re less than three feet away, and she  _ knows _ he leaned closer. 

And then, as with all things, she ruins it. 

Because this feels like a time to explain. This feels like a bridge that could connect who they were in the past to a future Betty and Jughead. Like the first time since he left her sobbing on the floor, begging him not to go, that she could  _ explain _ . What else could possibly bond them but a murder investigation?

“Jug, about what happened…”

The effect is instantaneous. Every single line of connection that had opened between them feels shuttered in an instant and he rocks to his feet, more wobbly than she’d expect. 

“We don’t need to talk about that.”

The statement is ridiculous, because of course they do. It’s the black cloud hanging over their every interaction. It’s the heavy stone that sits permanently in Betty’s stomach. It’s the voice in the back of her mind every day for the last seven years, telling her she ruined absolutely everything. 

“We  _ do  _ need to talk about it, Jughead, if you’d just let me explain…”

He shakes his head, his expression pinched. “Coworkers don’t need to discuss their personal lives, Betty. That means us too. Whatever happened, whatever we  _ were _ , it doesn’t matter.”

The thing is, it shouldn’t be a punch to the gut, but it is. Maybe she put too much faith into that one moment. Maybe a small piece of her believed that it could still be okay. 

“But Jug, if we just talked about it, then maybe I could make you understand…”

There’s a bang as his hand comes down on the table, so loud that Betty’s heart races as she jumps. 

“ _ No _ ,” he grits out. “No, Betty, I don’t want to hear you explain.”

“But Archie was..”

Looking back, it’s the name that set it off. Because Jughead was closed off from her before, but now...now it’s different. Now his back tenses and his eyes light with rage and the most hurtful of words spill from his lips. 

“Don’t you get it, Betty? It’s over. We’re done. We’re done because you betrayed me. You don’t need to explain, you don’t need to tell me about Archie, because  _ it doesn’t matter _ . I don’t love you anymore. I don’t, Betty, so whatever you say, none of it makes any difference.” 

It feels so rehearsed. Like he’s said it a thousand times, but he hasn’t, not to her, because she’d remember that. 

Jughead has never  _ made  _ her cry before. She’s cried at situations they’ve experienced, sure. But Jughead...he wasn’t the darkness, he was the light guiding her out of it. He was the one bringing her back into the world, with soft assurances that she was a good person, and “I love you”s breathed into her skin. 

And now...now he tells her he doesn’t love her, and he’s transformed back into the Jughead that she doesn’t know anymore. The worst of it is, she can expect nothing less. This is her fault. All of this is her fault, so she doesn’t even feel she deserves to hurt at the words. 

They don’t meet the next day. 

* * *

  
_Veronica_   
  


Veronica quickly learns that Tabitha’s sharp-witted, frenetic energy permeated everything, even text message. She sent Veronica quips about the cooking staff, particularly surly patrons, and puns about the food. 

She kept up the conversation, and Veronica is certainly grateful for it. To her surprise, her social skills feel rusty. She has to stop herself from signing off a text with “Regards, V. Gekko.” Whether or not it is the name that is somehow still foreign, and almost feels reserved for business purposes, or the fact that, upon scrolling through her recent messages, she finds few from people other than business associates, she doesn’t seem to know how to talk to a peer. 

But it’s a feeling that warms her, to have a friend. Tabitha strides confidently into Veronica’s life, and she seems to fit. Veronica tells the hotel reception to add Tabitha’s name to the approved guest list and that feels like a statement in and of itself. She goes to Pops, now, sometimes, to sit at the counter and hang out with Tabitha, while her new friend spins fantastical tales of the lives of the patrons, her lips smacking around the stick of the lollipop that seems permanently in her mouth. 

They surreptitiously watch two strangers break up and Tabitha pantomimes the voices. 

“But babe, my band is really about to take off. It’s just not the right time for a relationship. You get it, right?” she rasps. 

“Oh, yeah, sure, no problem. I’ve only been waiting for you to be serious about us for  _ three years _ ,” she mimes in for the girl. 

A giggle bursts out of Veronica. “Is she going to throw the milkshake at him? She should.”

Tabitha grins. “Girl, I would  _ happily _ clean that up. Please, let it be true.”

  
  


Tabitha fills a space inside Veronica. And most of the time, it’s good. It’s just that sometimes, a tiny voice flits at the back of her mind that her new friend fits  _ well _ , but not  _ perfectly. _

It’s a thought she doesn’t allow herself to entertain too often. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


It’s six days in when she can avoid it no longer. 

Her mother and father look exactly the same. Perfectly polished, not a hair out of place, and dead behind the eyes. Just the way she left them. 

And like before, all of their interactions make her feel as though she’s standing on a frozen lake. Every step is careful, methodical, every word carefully selected as her arms prickle with chill.

They ask how Chad is before her. Typical. Hiram and Hermoine adore Chad, could not be happier about their marriage. Veronica never counted herself as much of a unit with her parents before, but as crazy as it sounds, it feels like, ever since she got married, her parents and Chad have formed a collective that excludes her. 

And being here, it feels like being squeezed by a boa constrictor. There’s never enough air to keep her from choking. 

Veronica gives them a general update. Work is fine, Chad is fine, sends his regards, wishes he could be here. 

That delicate ice dance in every conversation is shattered, eventually, as she knew it would be. The ice cracks when they ask her when she plans to have children. Just that. No pretense, and tones filled with meaning. She is a failure for not yet getting pregnant, she knows this. A failure to Chad, to her parents, even to her company. There is to be no heir to leave what she has built to. 

By all accounts, she should want the same thing.

It’s her duty, and Veronica is long since too weary to fight it. There was a time she wasn’t. There was a time Veronica was a burning fire, who blazed her own path, who was a whisper away from escaping her family’s clutches. Who thought she could be better. 

And then the people who had held her hand to lead her out, had betrayed her. 

And then some, or all, of the fire had extinguished. 

* * *

  
  


It’s a lot, all at once. She finishes the perfunctory interaction, again feeling like she can’t breathe, and then at the first available opportunity, tears away to Pops to vent with Tabitha. 

But of course, of  _ course _ , with the way this entire night has been going, she doesn’t run into Tabitha. Instead, for the second time, she runs into one Archie Andrews and hates, absolutely  _ despises _ that her heart pounds hard at the sight of him. 

The anger in her very bones causes it. That is what she’s accepting. 

But this time, she’s too tired to fight. So when he awkwardly asks her how she is, she answers. She’s fine, because she is. She’s always fine. 

And she even musters up the will to ask him a question that only sounds about 75% like an accusation. 

“Why are you here, Archie?”

He winces visibly, bringing a hand back to scratch his neck. “Family issues, I guess you could say.” 

Family issues? Her mind flashes immediately to Mary, the thought of the woman’s kind smile making something ache inside her. 

This time, it’s not an accusation. “Is it Mary? Is she...is she okay?”

He hesitates, and that sets her heart out pounding with more feeling than either of her parents had been able to draw out of her. 

“They found a tumor. The doctors say...they say wait and see. That it could be nothing.” 

Veronica’s stomach drops to her feet, and her mind flashes back to Fred Andrews. To the drive that he took that summer day, that he probably thought was “nothing” until a car careened around the bend and changed all of them, and Riverdale itself, forever. 

“Does she…” her voice is soft, and to her own surprise, the tears in Archie’s eyes bring forth a pang of sympathy. “Does she need anything?”

( _ Throw money at it. The Lodge special, _ her mind jeers.)

Passing a hand through his hair, Archie regards the floor. “I think...she may like it if you visit, Veronica.” 

She doesn’t want to. She’s nearly positive, she doesn’t want to. But that doesn’t explain how, two hours later, she finds herself knocking on that old door on Elm Street, flowers in hand. 

  
  



	4. when the gusts came around to blow me down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She feels warmth around her shoulder, pressing into her skin. It feels good. If she closes her eyes, it almost feels like it did. 
> 
> Like the morning after they had beaten the Stonies. Jughead was home, Bret and Donna were gone, and they had spent the night celebrating. She can still feel the warmth of her naked skin pressed to his, his lips pressing gentle kisses into her hair, his fingers stroking through the blonde strands, the whispered “I love you.” That room, that time, had been so filled with love, she thought nothing could ever touch them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who got a new job? Well, for next year, but still. Also, I regret to inform you that in a mere three months, it will be March again. 
> 
> Plus side (or maybe not), Riverdale is back in like 5 weeks!

_I'm here again_   
_A thousand miles away from you_   
_A broken mess, just scattered pieces of who I am_   
_I tried so hard_   
_Thought I could do this on my own_   
_I've lost so much along the way_

* * *

** Jughead: **

They don’t speak, not for days. He turns over the conversation in his head, again and again. He repeats it again, over and over.

_ She betrayed you. You don’t love her anymore. It’s over. _

It is. By any stretch of the imagination, whatever and Betty were had ended long ago. She kissed Archie. He conjures up the feeling of that again. The beatdown by the Ghoulies hurt less than that. It hurt more than he can remember anything hurting, and he never saw it coming. He trusted her implicitly, more than anyone else in his life. She was the rest of his life, until that day. They were lying in their be, he remembers it with vivid clarity now, his hand trailing up and down her arm. He didn’t realize, then, how tense she was. He should have. 

Or maybe he shouldn’t have. Maybe he should have savored that last moment, the moment before everything broke apart. The last moment when it was just them, and they were in love. That basking is a feeling he doesn’t allow himself to remember anymore. 

And when she told him, her face was tear-stained. When she told him she was  _ confused _ , the word that destroyed their future. Then Archie’s name came into it, and he could physically feel their friendship splinter and shatter to the floor. 

He had never kidded himself. He was a poor kid from a trailer park, and Betty Cooper was....Betty Cooper. She was what everyone wanted, and her ending up with Archie just...always made perfect sense. 

Seven years in, he’s done well to convince himself he was just a brief interlude in the great Betty and Archie love story. There never was a point in fighting fate.

That thought, though, it still shatters him. His body aches, crying out for something, and he knows what. 

It’s hidden under the bed, and he’s not sure why. He doesn’t need it, and he shouldn’t be ashamed. His fingers close around it, and it’s as if his entire body sags in relief. Jughead collapses into the cheap hotel bed, and taps against the glass of the bottle with his fingers. 

Not tonight, maybe. Maybe tonight, he doesn’t need it. 

Then again, what would the night be spent on otherwise? Staring at his phone, refusing to send the text reaching out, but waiting for her to do it? 

She wouldn’t, and he’s to blame for that, he and his temper. His fingers twist the lid off the bottle before he can think twice, and it burns when it goes down, but that’s okay. 

The vodka helps loosen the thought, and for that, he’s grateful. The tingling sensation sweeps to his toes as he takes another sip. It’s bitter, too strong, but the effect is worth it, because it shakes the thought loose from the cavern of his mind. 

Jughead Jones, trailer park nobody, has known what it was like to be in love since he was ten years old. He’s spent nearly two-thirds of his life knowing what that warm feeling was when his stomach swooped at the sight of the person he loved. He knew the absolute peace of holding the love of his life in his arms, early as the sun rose. Since he was a child, he knew what it was like to look at someone and see the rest of his life. 

It was a warm feeling, a feeling of wholeness, of being complete. 

And then it was ripped off at the word  _ confused _ . And the world darkened. It became cold, and lonely. It put him back where he always was before. Alone and an observer to the love stories around him. But then he left, and college wasn’t bad. He was good at what he did. His professors were impressed. He wrote a lot, and was ever grateful that he didn’t delete the book he had been working on for years off his laptop. 

Some part of the book still feels like theirs, right down the words he couldn’t keep out of it. It’s in the fine print, where few will ever see it, but he needed it to be there. 

_ For her. _

He wrote it in, then wiped it from his brain. 

Jughead swigs another sip of alcohol and the world blurs pleasantly. He feels like he’s levitating, floating above the ground. Like how he felt when the book was published, and people started to talk about it, about him. Like he could be someone yet. 

And for a few brief, shining years, he was. He interviewed on TV, he had fan pages dedicated to him, people hung on his every word. There was money in the bank, and then there was Jessica. She was pretty, and nice, and she didn’t ask too much of him. He doesn’t even know what he had to give anymore, but she’s the first serious relationship he’s had after...after Betty. So it was nice, and she moved in. It was easy, until the money dried up and they started fighting. He worked on a second book, but it was slow going, and then she offered to edit. It feels like he was giving something up to her, something that used to belong to someone else, when he agreed. Her notes were gentle suggestions. She wrote happy faces in the corner, and it did him no good. The book was no better than when he’d given it to her, but she looked so hopeful and so proud that he never told her. 

Jessica. Maybe she was right for him, after all. It certainly didn’t seem that what he had originally thought was love was built to last. 

* * *

  
  


The stalemate lasts until it can’t anymore, because their parents are getting married. 

His father vibrates through the next week, and he expects Jughead to be at the same level of excitement. He’s his father’s best man, and his father is marrying Betty’s mother. The combined intensity is actually something Jughead is grateful for, because it is a distraction from the awkwardness of the family meeting to start planning the big event. 

(His stomach sinks when Alice refers to it as the “first” meeting.) 

They don’t meet eyes, he and Betty, and they sit far away from each other. Nobody is more aware than their parents that they are exes before anything else, and yet, in the delegation of tasks, they somehow get handed a joint list of things to accomplish before the wedding. 

They protest, but deep down Jughead knows, when Alice Cooper wants something, protests fall of deaf ears. Luckily the list is small. Wedding party restaurants, cake tasting (that’s how he knows Alice designed this with him in mind) and they are expected to do this together. 

Despite multiple problems with that, one that sits paramount is that Betty is still Betty Cooper, she who does nothing halfway. Jughead knows exactly what he’s in for, and it involves the pursuit of absolute perfection in everything she is assigned to. Also like Betty Cooper, despite knowing how painfully awkward this is sure to be, she smiles, nods politely and tells her mother not to worry, that they have it covered. 

FP shoots Jughead a glance that could be considered apologetic, and he bites down a sigh. So much for not talking.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The texts start that very night. They are businesslike. Betty sends him a list of restaurants, suit shops where he might get an appropriate outfit, and caterers. She expects him to respond and he knows it. But under the pretense of planning for the wedding, he supposes it’s okay. 

He suggests flavors and she responds and it’s all perfectly professional, just like the texts about the case had been. And then she makes the mistake of suggesting red velvet cake, and he sees the text, and can hold his tongue no longer. 

That text is a little less businesslike. “ _ Red velvet _ ? Are you crazy?”

It’s sent before he realizes and thusly curses the fact that phones can’t delete texts already sent. It’s not a businesslike text, it’s a casual text. Perhaps too casual. 

And its effect is immediate. It starts an actual conversation. Rather, it starts a very heated debate. Food has long been a subject Jughead finds himself to be rather passionate about, and he will fight to the death to protect the classic cakes’ honor. Red velvet is not an appropriate choice of cake for the wedding, and he will make sure she knows it. 

Betty had always been smart, and she comes with sources. She sends him articles extolling the benefits of flavors other than chocolate and vanilla, and then the sources turn to photo evidence, then to memes. 

Eventually the subject leaves cakes altogether and it is an actual conversation. He knows it crosses a line when it’s 1am but his phone lights up with her name. He answers the call before he can think twice, because it’s a line, but it’s about their jobs. 

And firmly, the subject stays on that, even as they talk until 3am. It begins with restaurants, then case theories, then just...talk. 

They speculate about their victims’ lives. The first man, he was a former army officer. His home had been stacked with old wrestling tapes, the covers making Jughead’s nose wrinkle even now. 

The conversation takes on a sadder note when they recall Jessie Stephens, whose mother had been calling every few days to see if there was anything new. So very young, just their age. She’d just had a birthday in October. 

They sign off at 3am, because Jughead knows Betty is getting tired. She’s not yawning, she never does, but she’s using an excessive amount of  _ okay _ s, a sure sign she is exhausted. He signs off and he’s not sure what to do with the tingling in his stomach that has nothing to do with the alcohol. 

* * *

  
  


She called him “Jug” once. It’s not Juggie, but it’s still more familiar, when they were one step away from her calling him Forsythe. 

And it permeates. The next day, they visit two of the restaurants on the list, and it’s not as awkward as it could be. 

The first restaurant is an Alice Cooper restaurant. Formal, clean and entirely boring, he knows his dad will hate it. But Betty being Betty, she’s arranged a tasting, something she makes known as soon as they enter. It’s busy, and they may have to wait, they are informed by the insanely peppy waiter. He offers them all manner of refreshments while they wait, but Betty declines for both of them. 

“Not a problem, miss,” the waiter chirps. “If you’ll wait just a moment, I will arrange a tasting for you and your boyfriend.” 

_ Boyfriend _ . It hangs between them, but the waiter is gone before they can correct him. Betty stutters out a few words, and the atmosphere shifts to awkward right away. 

“Betty, it’s fine,” Jughead says, cutting her off mid-ramble. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just easier.”

The subject is dropped, and neither of them dares bring it up again. 

Overall, the day is easy. That, in itself, is a miracle. They even manage to pick him out a suit with minimal awkwardness, but for the moment where she smiles at him, and his mind takes him back ten years, to a pink bedroom and blushing cheeks as they went on their very first Blue and Gold investigation. 

Actually, easy may be a bit of an overstatement. It’s a much more active day then Jughead is used to, a fact his body starts reminding him of as he sits on a hard couch in the dress shop, after the fifth dress that Betty has tried on, none of which he’s allowed to see. They trade theories about the victims, which has the fringe benefit of the shop assistant making herself scarce, a disturbed look on her face. They’d received more information from Robert Tisch’s family - they were as upscale as Riverdale could get, their house only second in its decadence to the Pembrooke and Thornhill. He was a socialite, but well liked. Not the kind of person who had many enemies. The lack of connection stymies them - the method of murder feels so intentional, but why? What specifically was it about these people that led to their deaths? 

Jughead talks until his voice goes hoarse. His body is starting to ache, a very familiar ache. The ache is accompanied by a distinctive wobble to his step, and his mouth feels like sandpaper. His body cries out for something, something that is usually not in short supply around this part of the day. It’s all consuming, a physical and mental need for the liquid that will steady him again. It’s all he can think about, and his writer's brain steers clear of any words that may describe this feeling, particularly words like  _ withdrawal _ . 

It takes over his brain, that is, until Betty stumbles out of the dressing room, tripping over the train of a gown, and then his eyes are on her. 

The dress is light, a white color with a fringed skirt and a neckline that plunges down low. It sits delicately on her hips, and the bust is covered by little sparkles, just barely covering her chest. Betty stands awkwardly in front of him, rubbing her arm self-consciously while Jughead struggles to form coherent words. 

“I know….it’s too much isn’t it?”

It is, definitely for an Alice Cooper wedding, but that’s not what he’s thinking. His eyes sweep over her chest, the way her hair falls in curls over her bright green eyes, and he’s stunned. 

He doesn’t even realize how long he’s been staring until she says his name gently. 

“Jug? It looks ridiculous, doesn’t it?” 

He clears his throat, the dryness there for an entirely different reason. 

“It doesn’t...you look beautiful, Betty.” It slips out unbidden and is the latest thing to hang in between them like a bomb. It changes the moment, it acknowledges something between them that neither are ready to face. It brings her eyes to meet his, standing a breath away from each other, closer in so many ways than they have been in years. 

And then, Betty’s head swivels around, breaking the moment, as her eyes light in a look he knows all too well. 

“Jug,” she says. “When is Jessie Stephens’ birthday?”

It feels a random question, but Jughead knows Betty Cooper too well to think anything is random about the way she thinks. 

“October 2nd. Why?”

Betty nods. “And she’s a writer? And a mystery fan?”

Again, he nods. “Yes. What does that have to do with - “ 

“Dark haired, too. Jug - “ she reaches out and grips his arm. “Do you know anyone else who’s a writer, born on October 2nd?”

When it dawns on him, several more revelations follow. “Oh my god, Betty - Robert Tisch is a socialite. Kind, but rich. Famous family.”

She nods. “And the first victim - he’s a boxing fan. Former army.” 

His stomach drops out, heart pounding now for an entirely different reason. “And Nancy Woods. They’re all...they’re all connected to  _ us _ , Betty. We’re the common thread. The victims are meant to represent us. They’re all set up like a mothman-style killing, maybe to throw us off, but these people are being killed because of us. Which means - “

“The killer isn’t an enemy of theirs.” Betty’s eyes shine as they lock onto his. “They’re an enemy of ours.” 

* * *

** Veronica: **

Mary Andrews had been very specific about Veronica not being sad. Something about her being sick of people pre-mourning her death when they didn’t even know she was sick. And Veronica tried. She’d always been good at wearing a mask over her feelings, but that had crumbled the second Mary had seen her at the door and greeted her warmly, with a tight hug. 

Veronica had sat in the kitchen she’d been in so many times before, yet not in so long, and Mary had insisted on making her a cup of tea. They’d eaten a slice of freshly baked bread, and Veronica couldn’t help but feel the stark contrast of this warm kitchen with the aging appliances and chipped plate to the cold, stately, modern kitchen at the Pembrooke. 

Mary had insisted on knowing how she was, what she’d been doing, how her business were going. Veronica was happy to tell, but avoided the subject of Chad altogether. There was a warmth inside her that she didn’t think had anything to do with the tea. She decides not to explore the fact that her mind tells her that telling Mary about Chad would ruin something. Studiously, they do not talk about Archie. 

But it’s good. The conversation is easy, and comfortable, and when they finally get around to Mary’s probable illness, she dismisses it with a wave of her hand. Stepping toward Veronica, she slides an arm around Veronica’s waist and squeezes. It feels more comforting than anything has in awhile, so her head moves of its own volition to settle on Mary’s shoulder. 

“It’s okay, Veronica,” Mary smiles. “Everything is going to be fine.” 

Veronica does not feel fine. In fact, in a feeling she rarely allows herself to explore, she cannot remember the last time she felt fine. She felt, some days, bordering on  _ okay _ . She felt successful. She felt competent. But fine? That eluded her most days. And to be fair, most days were indeed filled with work, so competence and success did fine on those days. But that counted for little here, where she was surrounded by painful memories, had a grand total of one maybe-friend and could feel the pressure of upholding her family’s legacy more keenly than ever before. 

No, she thinks as she sits despondently in a booth at Pops. No, today did not approach fine. 

The thought that directly followed that was that the universe must have some sort of grudge against her, because she hears a throat clearing next to her, and then there is Archie Andrews. 

(She’s pretty sure she hears Tabitha behind the counter, muttering about how they were way past their awkward-meeting quota in the last few weeks.) 

She doesn’t want to look up, but her brain does not seem to be cooperating, because suddenly she’s staring into brown eyes and her stomach is traitorously flipping. Veronica schools her face into a neutral expression, an expression that will make it plain that she does not care, even as her hands pick at the fabric of her gloves. 

“Are you...okay, Veronica?” His voice is hesitant, but his eyes scan over her. 

She scoffs. He’s asking her this, he of all people. He, who made her not fine. It doesn’t seem a question he has the right to ask. 

“I’m fine,” she is impressed by the neutrality of her voice. “Why do you ask, Archibald? More accurately, why are you here?”

It’s much like the last time. He doesn’t look surprised, but he also doesn’t look put off. In fact, he steps closer to her and reaches a hand to her face, stopping just short of touching her cheek. 

“You’re crying,” his voice is soft, and she reaches up to feel a slight wetness that she hadn’t even noticed on her cheeks. It’s not crying, not so dramatic, but in being brought back to the present she can feel her throat choked and the moisture in her eyes. 

She shakes herself and steps away. “I’m fine.”

She’s Veronica Lodge, after all. She doesn’t need to cry in the arms of anyone, least of all the boy who broke her heart. 

Said boy, though, doesn’t seem deterred. In fact, he slides next to her, closer than he has been in seven years, sending a shiver through her. Archie shakes his head.

“Okay, then. You’re fine. If you’re fine, let’s get out of here.” 

Veronica stops for a minute, sure she’s misheard. “Get out of here.”

Archie nods, his mouth quirking in the tiniest of smiles. “You’re fine, that means you don’t have to sit here and be sad. I don’t want that, and you don’t either. So, let’s go do something. Something..fun.”

Again, Veronica feels certain she’s misunderstood. “You want me to go do something fun...with you?  _ You _ ?” 

Archie’s face falls only slightly. “Yes. It’s basically the very least I could do. You could yell at me and glower at me the entire time, and I pay for everything. And then at the end, you tell me you had a terrible time, but at least we both did something.” 

His hand inch toward hers but don’t touch them. “Please, Veronica? I need a distraction.”

Veronica scoffs, leaning herself away. “Is that what I am? A distraction?”

Archie sighs, and meets her gaze. “What do you want to be?”

She hates, absolutely hates that there is a part of her that wants to do this. That desperately needs to forget as well. Forget her job, her parents, Chad, Mary’s illness...the problem is, that seems impossible. They seem to have taken permanent residence in her brain and the heaviness weighs on her every waking moment. 

So maybe this isn’t such a terrible idea after all. Veronica stands, and Archie pops up with his old cheerful grin, the one that makes her stomach twist. 

“I will complain, every moment,” she warns. Archie’s smile only grows.

“I’m counting on it.”

* * *

  
  


It’s cold. She complains about that several times, refusing Archie’s offer to borrow his hat. She doesn’t want anything of his touching her. She shivers, and that inspires him to take her on a tour of the surprisingly numerous amount of carts and coffee shops selling hot chocolate in all of Riverdale. 

He insists on rating them on a scale, based on heat, depth of taste, and “tongue feel”. That last one she refuses to smile at. He carries on an enthusiastic side of the conversation, taking her occasional monosyllabic answers as if she were participating equally. And it’s...different. It feels different than anything has felt in seven years. She still keeps a wide berth, and he pretends it doesn’t exist. They walk five feet apart, but still fall into step. Slowly, Veronica feels something that feels akin to melting. Her skin flushes, especially when a speeding past child knocks her within an inch or two of Archie. 

She tries to squash it, but the feeling grows to flow over her whole body. The cold, hard bench they sit on even feels cozy as Archie insists this cup is a ten and she  _ has  _ to try it. He himself doesn’t even seem to realize what he’s doing as he lifts the cup to Veronica’s lips, until his eyes meet hers. 

It’s a moment, as much as she may try to deny it. It’s a heart-pounding, still moment, and the Veronica of seven years ago would have no doubt swooned over it. 

This Veronica, however, clears her throat and stands, and this Archie doesn’t let the awkwardness stand there before diving off towards a skating rink and insisting they  _ have  _ to do that. 

She can’t skate. It was never a particularly important skill in the family business, so there was never a necessity to learn. Archie, however, grew up skating on ponds. The smooth ice slides under his skates as she frantically tries to grip the wall of the rink. 

He makes a valiant effort, but a giggle bursts through as she falls on her ass for the sixth time. And before she even realizes it, Veronica finds herself giggling too. A warm pair of hands scoop her up and set her on her feet. 

“Come on, Michelle Kwan. Let’s get some real skating in.”

“Like you know who that is,” Veronica grumbles. 

Ignoring her, Archie reaches down, and Veronica knows where he’s going. Her fingers lace with his through her soaked gloves and she doesn’t pull away. 

Archie grips her hand, and suddenly her skates are gliding over the ice. The winds buffs her face as the ice slips away beneath her, and her stomach fills with glee. It’s like dancing, like flying, and a grin splits her lips. She can’t remember feeling like this in years, so carefree and young. 

It’s a blissful feeling, and it lasts exactly as long as it takes before a child comes flying into them, coming out of it completely unharmed but leaving Archie and Veronica in a heap on the ground. They groan as Archie rubs his aching knee. 

“Damn kids,” he grumbles and Veronica cannot help the giggle that springs forth. 

“You look ridiculous,” she laughs, taking in his unruly hair and wet pants. He looks at her, a glint in his eyes. 

“Oh like you’re much better! Look at this,” he brandishes her hands in front of her. “What’s the point of wearing these gloves in the dead of winter. What are they made of, toilet paper?” 

“Hermes, thank you very much,” she grins and peels them off. He matches it, shaking his head. 

“Typical.” 

A child flies past them again, near hitting Veronica until Archie yanks her closer and out of the way. A lot closer, Veronica realizes. Close enough that their faces are mere inches apart. Veronica moves on autopilot, heart pounding. Like so many years before, her left hand reaches out to lay on his cheek.

For a moment, the world falls silent. But for only that moment, and then Archie’s brow furrows, and his hand comes to cover hers, and bring it down in front of him. 

The wedding ring glints in the sunlight and Veronica does not understand specifically what she feels, only that she’s feeling it, all at once, when Archie’s eyes meet hers, and the light sparkling behind them has gone out. 

His fingers drift within centimeters of the wedding ring, not daring to touch it. 

“You’re married,” he breathes. 

It’s such a dramatic flip. All at once, the choking sensation hits her throat again and her eyes well, but they shouldn’t because she shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t feel ashamed. She shouldn’t feel sad. 

All told, she barely has time to react at all before Archie is very delicately pulling her to her feet, and this time, the five feet between them has remained. Rapidly, she sees him swipe his fists under his eyes, before he turns away from her. Her heart pounds wildly. 

“Archie,” she whispers, but he doesn’t stop, walking both of them to the edge of the ice. 

“We should get back to the car,” is all he says. 

* * *

**Betty:**

Pops feels colder than it has in a long time, even with Jughead sitting right next to her. Her mind is still reeling, and he knows she feels the same. It all feels like a nightmare, like something that can’t be happening again. 

For so long, Betty has felt blood on her hands. The blood of so many Black Hood victims, on her because she didn’t see it. She thought she’d never wash the blood off. She’d thought it was her birthright. 

Only Jughead had seemed to see differently. And finally,  _ finally _ she thought she had repaid the debt. She’s an FBI agent. She catches killers. 

But it is as it always has been, and now the debt mounts. Those who fight monsters, and all that. 

Betty’s head drops into her hands, the tears she hadn’t even realized she was crying splashing on the table. 

She feels warmth around her shoulder, pressing into her skin. It feels good. If she closes her eyes, it almost feels like it did. 

Like the morning after they had beaten the Stonies. Jughead was home, Bret and Donna were gone, and they had spent the night celebrating. She can still feel the warmth of her naked skin pressed to his, his lips pressing gentle kisses into her hair, his fingers stroking through the blonde strands, the whispered “I love you.” That room, that time, had been so filled with love, she thought nothing could ever touch them.

Then she kissed Archie. And but a week later, her life lay in shambles of her own making. 

She barely notices she’s still crying until she feels a hand on her cheek, and then her eyes are meeting Jughead’s bright blue ones, perhaps for the first time in years. He looks spellbound, his eyes never leaving hers as his thumbs gently stroke the tears off her cheeks. 

“Everything fell apart, Jug, after.” She hasn’t felt  _ this _ , any of this, not in so long. Not the way her voice breaks on the sob. Not the fluttering in her stomach as he gazes at her. Not the warm sweeping her whole body. And not the regret, the pain, the anger at her own decisions that threatens to consume her. It’s so much, all at once, but Betty feels invigorated by it. Like she’s been brought back to life after so long lying dormant. 

“You left, and I hurt you. And then Veronica left, and I went to Yale, and I was alone. And I’ve…” The sob breaks through, and one of his hand rests on her cheek, thumb stroking over her skin. He’s beautiful like this, she thinks. Look at her for the first time, his face filled with pain, but open. 

“I’ve spent the last seven years reeling. Lost. But these last few weeks it’s felt like…things could be different. Better, like they were. We could solve this. We could all be together again. You..”

It’s the bravest thing she’s said, and Betty is profoundly aware of what talking about this did last time. Any time it looked like it could be different, that they could be  _ them _ again, in whatever capacity, the door shut in her face. But this time, he’s looking at her, and his gaze is different. 

“You could love me again.” 

It dangles in between them, the thing that could either break or fix them. Jughead’s mouth hangs agape, and his other hand comes up to cup her cheek. 

“Betty, I…” 

Looking back, neither of them were paying particularly close attention to their surroundings. Pops felt closed off, safe from the world. Like only each other existed in this sacred space. 

But the world did exist, and as it always does, it came crashing in, this time in the form of a figure with long hair throwing themselves against the booth. 

The force of the crash was enough to jolt the table, hitting Jughead in the elbow and knocking his hands off Betty's cheeks. 

After that, a breathless voice. She doesn’t catch all of it, only snatches, but those snatches are saying things like  _ wanted to be there for you  _ and  _ so sorry  _ and  _ we can work this out _ . 

That, specifically, doesn’t turn her head. 

No, that’s more Jughead’s exhalation of “Jess?” and the hand that’s currently shoved in her face. She shakes it, because she is a Cooper and Coopers are polite.

The girl bubbles on, but Betty catches only the words “I’m Jughead’s girlfriend” before her heart shatters. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I just...really need you all to remember why you like me. 
> 
> But also, it's okay if you hate me.


	5. maybe i'm only lying to myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re both silent, until Cheryl speaks, and there is a wobble in her voice. “Do you ever want to do it differently? Go back again, and do it better? Fight harder, or have that conversation again?”
> 
> Some new faces, some familiar faces, and some reckonings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is the point again where I tell you that I have a good relationship with my family and I had a happy childhood, so really, I don't know why I'm like this. 
> 
> And we come to a new chapter! I just have to say, I so appreciate everyone taking the time to comment. I love hearing from you all, even if it's to yell at me. 
> 
> Don't worry, I'm just making them earn their ending. It'll be okay in the end. 
> 
> Probably. 
> 
> Maybe.

_She's got wavy blonde hair, and her everything's nothing but sweet_   
_Wish I could hate her, but I see she makes him complete_   
_The way he looks at her, there's no doubt it's undeniably love_

* * *

** (?) **

They know. 

It’s okay; it’s an acceptable part of the plan. All was predicted, right down to the idiot sheriff not suspecting a thing. Such a safe town, Riverdale. Most residents don’t even lock their doors. 

She almost longs for a challenge, but it’s been painfully easy. Maddeningly easy. She wants to hear them beg, but she gets no such opportunity. At times, she even wants to leave one alive, barely. Bring them right up to the edge but don’t cross. To know her face would be permanently imprinted on the mind of another - that was the dream, was it not?

The others hesitate. They’re miserable cowards. Some of them she even catches staring at their targets, but she is above that. Oh, no. They are dirt, specks, soon to be wiped clean off the map. She can’t wait. 

Jughead trembles. She sees it when she watches from the shadows. He and Betty make pathetically longing glances at each other, and Betty starts to see the shakes. 

Bringing the girlfriend back in, that had been Number 2’s idea, and like the rest, it hadn’t taken much. A faked voicemail, a photo left in her apartment. Nostalgia is such a force for these people. And now both Betty and Jughead are more miserable when they started. All to the good, and now to focus on Veronica and Archie.

She smiles as she opens the cabinet, strokes the long, black feathers. She’s going to enjoy this, she resolves—every step of it. 

  
  
  


**(Betty)**

Betty is surprised it took this long for the murders to start picking up steam in the news. Over four murders now, and while they’d held back many details, people were noticing. She sees it everywhere. People look over their shoulder now, like they used to. Again, a killer walks among them. She recalls Nana Rose saying something once about Riverdale being born in blood, which seems to fit the theme of the last few years. Things are different now. 

Obviously, things are different. Every one of them is different. Nothing is like it was, and she has only herself to blame. But she was just starting to believe that things could be okay, and then Jessica happened. Jughead looked at Jessica, his  _ girlfriend _ . A girlfriend he was allowed to have. A girlfriend he hadn’t told her about. A girlfriend that slid down next to him and wrapped her arms around him. 

And no, she didn’t deserve it, but Betty could feel her heartbreaking. She could feel the splinterings start to press against her veins, feel her breathing quicken, and her head spin. Jughead was saying something to her, but she didn’t listen. She couldn’t listen; she could only tear out of there as soon as possible and lean against the wall of Pops, trying in vain to calm her breathing.

It couldn’t be worse, she thought. Surely, nothing could top this moment, the moment where her heart, once delicately put back together, had fallen and cracked onto the floor. 

She and Jughead were finally getting back to something comfortable. Something good. Something like what, seven years ago, she had thrown away. 

_ But I thought you loved me. _ She wishes she could forget it, but it’s also the last time she pressed herself into him, tried to pour every bit of the love she felt for him into his skin. That’s a memory that’s still treasured. But when it was over, she was still left sobbing on the floor, even hours after he’d gone, begging him to come back. 

Now they were both back, and he had a girlfriend. One who loved him. 

No, nothing could be worse, except it could. Because as she struggles to breathe, as her vision blurs and her breath comes in tiny gasps, her eyes flick around wildly, and they fall on something. Or rather, someone. They fall on shiny black hair and brown eyes, and a tiny frame.

And somehow, inexplicably, it hurts even worse to be having a panic attack in front of Veronica Lodge. 

She had imagined this moment, when she’d see her former best friend again. It’s a moment imagined in the thousands of times her fingers have passed over Veronica’s name in her phone. When she had gotten a new phone, she had added the number. It was foolish, Veronica likely hadn’t even kept the number. But she feel the loss of her best friend like a loss of limb, and she had imagined this moment. She hadn’t wanted to, but she had. Betty supposed she might beg for forgiveness. Perhaps extend an olive branch. Even something so simple as a smile, but she is capable of none of that right now. 

They stare at each other. Her vision is blurred, too much to see the expression on Veronica’s face, but brown eyes meet green head-on, and neither moves. 

Maybe it’s seconds; perhaps it’s minutes, Betty’s not sure. But Veronica is there, and then suddenly, she’s not. She’s not, but Betty’s breathing won’t calm, and her face is sticky with tears and stuck hair. It takes everything in her not to dig her nails in, but she’s past that. She should be past that. 

Betty can feel her legs wobbling like Jughead’s did. It was odd then (and odd now). He’s always been so steady. He’s always carried her. Come to think of it (and barely realizing she can now think), he was unsteady in the bunker as well, after he’d drank the two beers, never something the Jughead of the past had done. But as had been made profoundly clear, this Jughead was not the Jughead of the past. 

When that thought clears, Betty realizes her breathing is steadying. She’s a mess, but she no longer feels like she might die at that very moment. She allows herself a few steps to round the building and make sure there is nobody watching. Nobody is there, but her eyes catch on a piece of white cloth that surely wasn’t there before. On closer inspection, it’s a folded, expensive-looking square of fabric. A handkerchief. It’s sitting around the corner, near her but not in her line of vision. 

There’s an inscription in the corner, a stitched in insignia. 

V.L. 

  
  
  
  
  


** (Veronica) **

Chad sweeps into town with his usual fanfare, showing up at her door with a cascade of flowers and her favorite cupcakes. 

She didn’t invite him, but she’s happy he’s here. That’s most definitely the primary emotion as her husband sweeps her into his arms, covering her cheeks with kisses and telling her how much he’s missed her. 

She almost thinks he may have told her parents he was coming before he showed up, because Hiram and Hermoine insist on dinner within an hour of his arrival. Chad is welcomed back as eagerly and openly as she has ever seen her parents, and the ornate table is quickly filled with catered food. Her husband and parents keep up a steady chat during dinner. The conversation is hushed but animated. Veronica half-listens, half just takes in the conversation around her. 

What she does not do, however, is allow her mind back to a cup of hot chocolate and a skating rink. 

Nor, either, to a sobbing blonde girl, leaning against a wall with hair stuck to her face, looking as if her heart was splintering in her chest, and the way Veronica’s chest had ached in response. 

Which is insane, because she should have felt one of two things. She should have felt angry, or she should have felt nothing. She should not have felt warm, or sympathetic or longing. Not in any way. 

And really, she shouldn’t even be thinking about this. Not when her husband is here, and his hand squeezes hers occasionally under the table.

When she does drift back to the conversation, she hears her husband talking about her work schedule. His tone is confident, as if it was his job he was discussing. But she knows it’s hers because the tone is pointed, and she recognizes the words. 

_ Plenty of room to take leave,  _ he says.  _ If the need comes for a few months off. _

Veronica knows what this means. She knows he’s not talk about vacation. And if she wasn’t clear, it’s immediately obvious in the way her parents’ eyes turn to her, drifting quickly down to her midsection and back up. 

A tiny, spiteful voice in the back of her head, one she barely recognizes, sneers at them. 

_ Right. Me and my unoccupied uterus. The family disappointment.  _

But she plasters a smile on her voice and smoothly changes the topic to her father’s work, knowing full well how long he could talk about. 

  
  
  


Chad kisses her, back at their hotel room. He kisses her and slowly moves his fingers under her blouse, up her back and to her bra clasp. 

She’s tired. Emotionally and physically, she’s exhausted. But he’s her husband, and she loves him. So she slides her tongue into his mouth and presses him closer. He deposits her on the bed, and though her thoughts have been screaming at her all day, she allows herself to feel nothing at all. 

  
  
  
  
  


** (Betty) **

She doesn’t go back into Pops. She couldn’t, she could only be grateful for the fact that she had grabbed her belongings before fleeing. Betty paces in front of Pops, toeing a hole in the dirt, unsure of where to go next. 

Luckily, that decision is taken out of her hands when two manicured hands grab hers. 

For one heart-stopping moment, she imagines she may look up and find dark hair and brown eyes, but it’s a silly thought, and the hair is bright red. Then the arms wrap around her, and Cheryl Blossom hugs her tightly. 

It’s a warm, eager embrace and it brings a smile to her face at long last. 

“Sweet cousin,” her cousin cries. “It’s been entirely too long.” 

Cheryl pulls back and her brown furrows at Betty’s unkempt state. 

“Cousin Betty,” she says. “Have you been through a fight? Whatever is to blame for the ragamuffin state in which I find my dear, sweet Betty?”

The phrasing is so uniquely Cheryl, and she’s missed it. But the questioning makes her eyes flick back briefly to the window at Pops, where Jughead and Jessica are still visible. It’s quick, but Cheryl sees it, and her eyes go there too. When they return to Betty, there’s an understanding look on the redhead’s face. 

“I’m to understand the hobo has found himself a new paramour?” 

Betty nods, eyes welling up. 

Cheryl wraps an arm around Betty. “Oh, love,” she sighs. “You cruel thief of joy.” 

Betty shakes her head. “It’s his right, Cheryl. He’s allowed to have love in his life. And I’m...I’m glad he does.” 

Cheryl doesn’t look convinced in any way, but she thankfully lets the subject drop, and wraps one arm around Betty, leading her to the bright red convertible that could only be Cheryl’s. 

“Of course,” she says. “But for now, we must get that look taken care of. I can’t allow family of mine to be traipsing around town looking the way you do. No offense, of course, cousin,” she pokes at Betty’s flat ponytail. “But does the FBI not sponsor a weekly blowout?”

  
  


She spends the night with Cheryl at Thornhill. Her cousin would never admit it, but she was lonely. 

She asks about Jughead, sometimes, but Betty doesn’t allow herself to talk too much about him. She asks about Toni and receives a similar reaction from Cheryl. It makes her ache a little, both in sympathy for her irrepresible cousing looking so down, but also because Cheryl and Toni’s breakup is not new, and is in fact nearly three years old. 

She knew Cheryl. Cheryl grabbed onto love with both hands, and did not know how to let it go. She would have fought for love, but time and circumstance had ripped both girls apart. Cheryl had graduated, and for that, Betty was proud. She had attended Cheryl’s graduation, watched her cousin bask in the applause she was so owed. But Toni’s presence was noticeably missing, and she knows Cheryl felt it. 

Her cousin is, above all things, proud, though. She is not the type to beg. This was Cheryl’s second time home in the last six months, she tells her, and she is steering clear of her ex, and her rounded, pregnant belly. 

To hear Toni tell it, Cheryl says, it was a spur of the moment decision. The Serpents needed money, and someone had offered to pay her $40,000 to be a surrogate. She was young and healthy, and it was money she couldn’t turn down. 

That’s how it’s explained to Betty, at least. 

(She meets Toni three days later and hears roughly the same story. There’s an almost clinical detachment in her words. Her hands never drift to her belly, but she eats healthy and stays out of the smoke-filled Whyte Wyrm.)

With a sigh, Cheryl lies down on the luxurious bed and pulls Betty down with her. 

They feel too old to be doing this, cuddling for any semblance of affection, but it feels nice. It’s been a long time since Betty has been held affectionately, and Cheryl’s unique brand of unchecked love is, in small bursts, endearing. 

They’re both silent, until Cheryl speaks, and there is a wobble in her voice. “Do you ever want to do it differently? Go back again, and do it better? Fight harder, or have that conversation again?”

A single tear leaks, and Betty wipes it away quickly. 

“I don’t have the right to anymore, Cheryl. I made a choice. Now, it’s just about living with the consequences.” 

  
  
  


** (Jughead) **

It all happens so fast. One minute time is frozen as he holds Betty’s face in his hands and her words ring in the space between them. 

_ You could love me again _ . 

His heart pounds. He can’t breathe, he can’t hear or see anything but Betty. It’s a feeling that had lingered on the fringes of his memory, and now comes roaring into the forefront. 

HIs mind flashes back to a different time, a different supernatual mystery. After the Gargoyle king, when Betty had been abandoned by her family. He had taken her home, and told his father in no uncertain terms that either she stayed or they both left. She had nightmares the first few weeks, nightmares that kept both of them up for hours. He’d taken to soothing his hands through her hair while she clung onto him for any semblance of safety. 

_ Tell me you love me Juggie, please _ , she’d said, and over and over, for hours, he’d whispered it into her hair. 

_ I love you. I love you. I love you, Betty _ . 

That’s what he thinks about now. 

And then the table knocks into him and there are other sounds. More specifically, Jessica’s voice. Then Jessica’s hands, Jessica’s lips, Jessica’s embrace, and Betty’s shattered look as she runs away. 

He wants to go after her, but Jessica. She’s sitting with him, stroking his hair back, kissing his cheek, murmuring how sorry she is and how she’s here for him and she wants to give this another try. 

Jughead has spent the better part of the last few weeks desperately conjuring up positive images of Jessica. Trying to remember all the good things, how he felt around her, how he made her feel. Perhaps that wasn’t for nothing. 

He asks her back to his hotel room because he feels like he should. He’s the one who had the biggest hand in the end of the relationship, and she is the one asking for clemency. Surely that merits a second look. 

And then, when they’re lying in his bed, she asks him who that girl in the diner was. 

  
He focuses all his energy in controlling his breathing. He’s told her only scant details about Betty. What he didn’t tell her, according to her, was made evident in his state when they had first started dating. 

“You were so withdrawn, Jug,” she says. “So sad. I thought you’d never come out of that, the way Betty broke your heart.” 

She smiles, snuggles her head into his side. “But then you did. We helped fix each other, didn’t we?”

He hopes to god his smile and nod is convincing. 

Now, he doesn’t even have to look at Jessica to give it away. She gasps. 

“That was Betty, wasn’t it?”

He nods, all he can manage. Jessica leans into him, runs her fingers through his hair. “Oh Jug, I’m so sorry. I know what she did to you. Are they making you work on the case with her?”

It’s strange, this need he has to defend Betty. But he knows better, at least now. He tells Jessica not to worry, that he’s fine, and then immediately switches the subject to dinner. His hands itch to be curled around a bottle, when suddenly Jessica is producing a flask. 

She hums, laying a hand on his cheek. “You look stressed,” she smiles. “I know you. Drink this and you’ll feel better.” 

(Only marginally, but he does.) 

  
  
  
  


Tips come in now. People are noticing the murders. There appears to be a quota of murders before Riverdale’s residents start noticing, and then nobody knows how to react. FP tasks two more people to take in the calls, and most of them are useless. In point of fact, some of them are just calling to complain about completely unrelated business. More than once, he hears a terse voice saying “ma’am, I cannot make your neighbor’s dog stay in its yard.” 

But there are a few threads FP passes onto Jughead. The consensus seems to be unbelievable, but then, it’s Riverdale. People are talking about a humanoid, with large wings. Red eyes, the size of a man but bigger. 

It flies, they say. They saw it. 

Jughead considers himself fairly open-minded, after growing up in Riverdale. After the Gargoyle King especially, but even he has doubts. Nonetheless, he opens his computer and spends hours falling down different rabbit holes, until he lands on one possibility. It stares at him, unblinking, from the light of his laptop. 

_ Mothmen.  _

It fits, as much as something can fit. The mothman was fairly new mythology, only about 70 years old. A large, black winged, bat-like humanoid creature with big red eyes. It was the stuff of urban legend. 

  
His mind flashes to the coroner’s report. The victims appeared to have been gored, it said. Marks on them were described as “wing-shaped.” 

He flips the case notes open. He really should be at the murder board, but something about going to the bunker feels wrong. He hadn’t seen Betty since she’d flown out Pops. He curses the instinct, the raw want to go to her, to comfort her. His conscious brain tries to dismiss it as latent. His subconscious tries to believe it. 

The case notes all have one thing in common - high levels of serotonin. The kind of levels that would make a person extremely anxious. He’d overlooked it at first, because the prospect of being murdered did tend to make a person less than comfortable. But it was also in the pathology of the mothman: victims felt a sense of deep anxiety. That, plus the feathers, the wing-like marks on the bodies - well, he’d heard crazier theories. 

  
  
  
  


“You want to  _ what _ ?”

It’s the next day, and Jessica stands in front of him, hands on hips and a look of impatience on her face. 

“The  _ case _ , Jughead. I want to help you with the case.” 

“But...why?”

Jessica breathes out a heavy sigh. “In case you don’t remember, Jughead, I’m a criminology major. Helping on crimes is kind of what I do.”

“Jess, you process evidence. Not work active murders.” 

She looks hurt, and he instantly regrets his words. “Do your murders come with zero evidence, Jughead?” 

“No. I’m sorry. We’d...I’d love to have you help.” 

Jessica’s face bursts into a bright smile as she slides her hand into his. “I’m so glad we have something to do together. Even if the thing we have to do together is….this.” 

There’s a distaste in her words, which makes sense, given the subject matter. But for some reason, it still stings. 

Jessica is good at what she does, he knows. She may even be helpful in the case. But as he goes over the case notes with her, he feels like he’s sharing something overly intimate. It’s a very strange thought, given that what he’s sharing is graphic photos of murders. But it feels like he’s giving away something he shouldn’t be. 

And then he has to tell Betty. 

He meets her again in the bunker, with his stomach churning. Jessica climbs down after him, her nose wrinkling just slightly at the odor. Betty turns to face him, and for a moment, her face is full of hope. 

Then she sees Jessica, and he’s blurting out the words before he can help it. 

“She’s….she’s going to help us with the case. Evidence and stuff.”

It sounds pathetic, and he hates how his eyes stay on Betty, never reaching Jessica. Betty’s “oh” is tiny, but he feels the hurt in her eyes like a knife before the patented Cooper smile and an outstretched hand are offered to Jessica.

  
  
  
  


** (Archie) **

It’s peaceful in Sweetwater Park. He takes any spot of peace he can get, given the last few months. The cold bites at his cheeks, but he doesn’t mind. The water is slow, and moves gently. It’s lulling. If he watches it long enough, he can almost pretend that tomorrow, he doesn’t find out if he will lose his second parent. 

He hugs his mother more now. He stays in with her. He tells her what she means to him. He thanks her, because surely, it couldn’t have been easy to raise him. 

And most assuring, he tells her that he forgives her for leaving. 

He’s lucky, he knows. He always has been. The luckiest of his friends, to never doubt that he was loved. But he doesn’t feel lucky now. He feels different. He’s felt different since Fred Andrews died. It was as if something shifted inside of him. Something rearranged, and he could never come out quite the same. He’s still not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but maybe it helps explain Betty. 

At that time, his mind had been a jumble. He’d been sure he was falling in love with Betty. Maybe it was destiny after all. He had long heard his father say that he wouldn’t be surprised if Betty and Archie were to end up together. Nobody ever really left this town, and Archie had never wanted to. Veronica...he loved her so deeply, so genuinely. But he felt pulled from both sides, after his father died. He was different, and he didn’t want to be. He wanted to be the same Archie Andrews that Fred Andrews had been proud of. An Archie that would stay, and save Riverdale, while he felt Veronica pulling him into her future, a future that felt all but assured. It felt like it would be so easy to stay, with Betty by his side, that he hadn’t even considered Veronica. Or, for that matter, Jughead. 

As terrible as it sounded, Betty was familiar and comfortable. She was effortless, a symbol of what was in a simpler time. 

But then his best friend’s fist had knocked into his face, and Veronica had looked at him in the way he always feared his father would, like she didn’t recognize him. 

Her soft “how could you?” is still on a constant loop in his head, along with Jughead’s angry voice. 

“She’s something to achieve, for you,” he had said. “But for me, she’s the rest of my life.” 

And then Riverdale had felt stifling, and he had to get out. He doesn’t regret it, not really. He’d seen things now. But coming home felt, in many ways, inevitable. 

There’s a crack of a twig, which makes his head snap up. 

As if ripped straight from his thoughts, Betty Cooper is suddenly in his line of vision. It’s clear she didn’t expect to see him. 

She moves to turn away, but it’s still Betty, so he still call out to her, and he calls out the first thing he can think of. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Her posture is stiff, in a way it never was in the fifteen plus years he’s known her. Her shoulders are nearly at her ears, but her face looks a little clearer. 

“Thanks,” she says. “Me too.” 

They don’t go into what they are sorry for, but it’s still a step. It’s a thawing, on a frigid day. 

They stand there a few more moments. He doesn’t want to push this, but it makes him feel lighter. It takes a fraction of the guilt he’s carried for seven years. So he pushes it, just a hair. 

“You know, Pops still makes good milkshakes.” 

She gives a tiny smile. “I’ve heard that.” 

It’s all they’ll allow themselves, but it’s something. 

  
  


**(Jughead)**

He has to go pick up a few documents. He both wants desperately to leave the bunker, which had held over 10 people but still feels much too small for 3 people, and he wants to linger as much as possible. 

He’s the sheriff’s son. People recognize him, and it just makes the most sense for him to go and get the documents to finish off their murder board. 

But that means leaving Betty alone with Jessica, if only for a few moments. Jessica assures him she is almost done, that she will be going back to their hotel room in only a few minutes, that it’s fine and they’re professionals, but still he hesitates. 

Betty assures him too. He can read the look in her eyes, but she’s still a Cooper. They insist they’re fine, so he goes.

It’s no more than 30 minutes, but when he clambers down the stairs and back to the bunker, things are different. Jessica is gone, and Betty looks, for all intents and purposes the same, but something feels off. 

They spend another hour there, going over mothmen theories. They listen to the tape of Jessie’s mother and Mr. Tisch’s wife, and he suggests they visit a few witnesses tomorrow. 

She nods, and then he asks her to get a milkshake after it. It’s not a new request. In light of their easier relationship the past few weeks, they’ve gone out to eat many times. It’s become a version of normal, but this time, she turns him down. 

And this time, her eyes shine with emotion, so he asks her if she’s okay. 

She says she is, because she always is, but there’s a long pause. 

“Betty?” he questions. 

She pauses for another moment, before telling him that maybe they shouldn’t be spending any time together outside of the case. 

His heart drops into his stomach. 

“Betty,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Did...did Jessica say anything to you?”

She shakes her head. “No, Jug. At least...nothing that wasn’t a needed reality check.” 

Now he’s confused. He flips over the memories of the last few weeks in his head, and he distinctively remembers Betty pressing him to talk to her, to spend time with her, and then how easy it was when they did. How good it felt to have her back.

“Betty, we can still...I mean, just because Jessica’s here, it doesn’t mean…”

“It does, though, Jug. It does. And before you say anything to her, she wasn’t mean. She was just right. And it made me realize that I’ve been kidding myself.” 

“But..”

“No, please let me get this out.” She swallows hard and finally walks to him, looking at him with teary green eyes.

_ Tell me you love me, Juggie, please _ . 

“Jug...I will never be able to make up for what I did to you. I hurt you, I hurt you so bad. And part of that was the situation, but...I think part of it is just me. I hurt people around me. I did that to you once, and I wouldn’t survive doing it to you again. But she...she helped you. She made you better, after I tore you apart.”

That pain is pain he will never forget. The pain of having Betty cleaved away from him. Of going to Iowa, alone. But the last few weeks, they have been a salve. He allows himself a single moment to wonder if being with Jessica has healed him, in any way. 

Betty’s tiny sniffle brings him back to the present. 

“So...I think you should go be with her. And I’ll…I’ll stay away from you. We can solve this case, and then I’ll go. And you’ll be happy.”

She kisses his cheek, and he feels the wetness of tears. 

Her lips press like a whisper against his skin. He doesn’t think he’s imagining it when he hears her give a heaving sob, and then she’s gone. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes:
> 
> 1\. I hope you didn't interpret the Barchie scene as them coming back together. That wasn't the intention and definitely not where I'll be going. I am having to constantly remind myself that this is MY imagining of S5, and I don't need to follow canon exactly. I am also really trying to explain his perspective on this whole shitshow. 
> 
> 2\. As happy as I am for Vanessa and her pregnancy, I don't see how they'd add this into the story well. However, it seems canon is going with pregnant Toni, so here we are. But Choni fans, imagine Cheryl helping Toni through the birth. 
> 
> 3\. Betty's starting to notice things with Jughead. Alcoholism isn't easy to hide. 
> 
> 4\. I am really trying to show that Jessica and Jughead are not right for each other, while trying not to villianize her. Honestly, if I was trying to patch things up with my significant other and he spent a lot of time working closely with his ex, I may not be comfortable with it either. 
> 
> 5\. There's a note for the next chapter that reads "PUT REGGIE IN GODDAMN YOU"
> 
> 6\. Veronica Lodge is too good for this world.


	6. heart on your sleeve like you've never been loved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty. Betty. Betty. 
> 
> It loops in his head. She’s all he thinks about. Drunk, or sober, he thinks about her. He thinks about going to her, apologizing, begging for forgiveness. Begging to start over. Could they even start over now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *slaps chapter down in front of you* This baby is 9k of idiots in love that don't realize they're in love.
> 
> I don't know guys, I just started writing and then I didn't stop. Those chapter outlines, wow. What an invention. Kids today, what will they come up with next?

_I'm not scared to tell the truth_

_I've been to hell and back, and I went with you_

_Remind me what we were before_

_When you said you are mine and I am yours_

* * *

**Jughead**

“Just a small wedding,” Alice Cooper flies by him, straightening an entire floor’s worth of floral arrangements, by three full tables of food. 

This had been the repeated mantra of the last few weeks, during the few times he drops by the house. A small wedding, nothing fancy, no church or processional, family and friends only. 

Jughead doesn’t really know how to reconcile that and their home looking like a greenhouse, but he doesn’t dare say anything to Alice. She had been more than a little stressed out with the wedding in only a few days, and FP had already wisely learned to stay out of her hair, so Jughead is endeavoring to do the same. 

However, he does loudly complain on the phone to Jellybean about “the  _ flowers _ , and the  _ themes _ and the  _ lighting _ , and does gray work better with gold or white?”

His sister chuckles over the phone. “Can’t wait to get back, Jug. Sounds like a great time; you’re really hyping it up.”

Jughead flops on the bed with a groan, careful to hold the scotch that was so desperately needed steady so that Jellybean wouldn’t hear the ice clinking.

His sister had always been overly concerned about him. A product of their upbringing, maybe, or so many years separated. She had trouble understanding that he was an adult, and occasionally, adults drank. Sometimes, after long days of wedding planning, to comfort their shaking bones. 

So he hides it, as a big brother does. Even with Jellybean in college, living with her girlfriend in Philadelphia, she was still his baby sister, the only sibling he had, especially considering past events. 

“You gotta get here, Jelly. I need a point person for when Alice gets a bit too... _ Alice _ .”

This time, he hears the accompanying giggle of Jellybean’s girlfriend, Melanie. “We’ll be there before the wedding, Jug. But not too  _ before _ , this does not sound like a party.”

“Oh, there will be a party. A perfectly planned, immaculately catered party that is the very  _ essence  _ of Alice Cooper.”

Melanie hums over the line. “Sounds like a rager. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Jellybean takes over the line again, and this time, there’s a definite concerned note to her voice. “How are you, big brother? I’m guessing it’s pretty awkward down there, you and Betty helping plan a wedding.”

Jughead heaves a sigh. Truthfully, he hasn’t talked to Betty in a few days. She has purposely been making herself scarce, asking Alice to come to her for wedding planning, and not ever texting him for anything other than case-related information.

The ache her absence creates is hard to ignore. He’s tried to reach out more than once, but the same response comes every time. 

_ I really feel like it is best if we only discuss the case. Please do let me know any details pertaining to the murders _ . 

It’s a cold, clinical message that sounds so un-Betty, like it couldn’t have come from the same person that just a short while ago had been begging him to love her again. 

To this point, Betty had still refused to tell him what Jessica had said to her, saying only that it wasn’t cruel, and Jughead should focus on his relationship with her. Past that, he got the same cold message again and again, and it was driving him crazy. 

  
  
  


The nights are quiet with Jessica. She’s of the opinion that work should be left at work, she always has been, so they don’t talk about the case. Jughead has long since stopped telling anyone about anything pertaining to his childhood or hometown, so even in the very hometown, they don’t talk about Riverdale. And they certainly don’t talk about Betty. Oh no, Betty is the number one off-limits topic. 

So the nights are quiet. Jessica falls asleep quickly, which is both good and bad. There’s no awkwardness, but Jughead is left alone with his thoughts. 

Well, thought. Singular. The only thought that spins around his mind is Betty’s tear-stained face, kissing him on the cheek and walking away. 

But his sister doesn’t need to know any of that. 

“It’s...fine, Jelly. We’re getting through it.” 

They are, in a way. In a way involving many sympathetic glances from both Alice and FP, and moments when they are together feeling so charged that Jughead comes away feeling the energy vibrating through him.    
  


They’re getting through it, and Jughead has long stopped being hopeful enough to think, someday, life may be more than just something to get through. 

It’s a bit too heavy a thought for a conversation with his baby sister, so he changes the topic to lighter subjects. Jellybean tells him about school, bubbling with excitement. She had gotten into veterinary school, a hugely exclusive program, and has been loving it. He’s so proud of her.

Eventually, the topic turns back to the wedding, and Jellybean falls silent for a few moments. 

“Jug...do you ever think she may be going so family-crazy because of Polly? And maybe even...Charles? I mean, if you think about it, Betty’s the last kid she’s really got.”

That sticks with him all night and to the house the next day. He doesn’t really know why, but he’s never associated Alice as someone who has lived through an amount of tragedy, but she has. Abusive childhood, lost love, a child given up, unhappy marriage to someone who turned out to be a serial killer, then two children, both alive, both lost to her. And when she finally did get the happy ending she wanted, it was nearly three decades delayed. Alice had always held on so tightly to Betty, and he often wondered why. 

But it seems so clear now.

Because everyone else was gone. 

It’s a stark thought. So stark, in fact, that he must have been staring at her without realizing it because she finally comes to a stop in front of him, hands on hips. 

“For god’s sake, Jug-head, what is it today? You’ve been silent and staring - and not pruning, might I add,” she says, eyeing the shears in his hand pointedly. 

“It’s been nearly thirty minutes. What’s going on?”

He and Alice don’t really  _ talk _ in the strictest sense. She still pronounces his name Jug-head, and there were, even at the end of he and Betty’s relationship, moments where she had still looked at him like the hoodlum from the trailer park. 

But he has to know. 

“Do you have….regrets?”

A shadow falls across Alice’s face. The mask slips for just a moment. “Regrets?”

He nods. 

“About...everything. About you and my dad. Do you ever wish it could have been different? That you hadn’t wasted so much time?”

Alice sits beside him, and he’s reminded of the time she flew to Iowa for a total of two days when he was deathly sick, just to clean and cook and make sure he was taken care of. He and Betty had already broken up, and he was more than a little surprised to see her. But at a time where he could barely lift his head, she was there, stroking his hair back and changing his sheets. 

Now, she sighs, and he sees the weariness around her eyes. 

“I try hard not to think about that, Jug-head. There’s been so much good in my life. There’s Betty and Polly, and I would have never had them if life had been different. So for that, I’m grateful.”

She pauses for a moment. “I don’t know if it’s really  _ regret _ , but sometimes I..wonder. What it would have been like if life had been different.”

He nods. “Do you...think it would have been better.”

Alice pats his hands. “Nobody can know that, Jug-head, and I’ve found that such thoughts take up far too much room. Once you start wondering what could have been, what you have in the now is never enough. And if there is anything that all of this has taught me, it’s to appreciate what we have.”

He regards their joined hands. Does he really appreciate what he has? Sometimes, it feels like he’s sleepwalking through his life. 

“What if you can’t?”

Alice squeezes his hands. “It takes time. It takes practice.” 

She tips his chin up so she’s looking into his eyes. “The difference is, you still have time.”

And then she strides away to prune the flowers, and he is left with those words. 

  
  


FP says much the same, and it’s not the first time Jughead’s heard it. He was a terrible father, turning to alcohol to solve problems because that was all he had been taught. He’d ruined Jughead’s childhood, he says, and while Jughead knows that he should disagree, the fact was he  _ had  _ made life infinitely harder as a child. 

  
  


“It’s the booze, son,” his dad says. “It’s a wonder you turned out as good as you did. But the way I was, like that...Alice and I would never have worked. I’d have hurt her, left her, or just ignored her the way I did with your mom. In a lot more ways than one, I can’t regret the last few years.” 

FP slaps him on the shoulder. “It gave me you. And your sister and it got me to a place where I was ready to be with Alice. The twenty-years-ago me had no way of being ready for that.” 

  
  
  


**Betty**

It’s the timing that starts to tip her off. The murders are oddly timed, all of them. Once they’d learned they were looking for a killer who knew them, Betty had been studying every detail of the case files, and the timing sticks out. It’s one of the few things she’ll allow herself to text Jughead about. 

Not the only thing she  _ wanted  _ to text him about, to be fair. Her hand had hovered over his contact at least a dozen times in the last few days alone, desperate to reach out. 

But that wasn’t a right she had earned. He had a girlfriend. He deserved to have her step aside, to give the relationship a chance. 

Sure, it may feel like being knifed in the gut when she saw them together. Sure, she may feel like throwing up when she thinks about them getting married, and having children, and moving away to some peaceful life in the suburbs and never seeing her again.

But she had discarded him. Her sweet, loving, dedicated boyfriend, the one who loved her so completely, she had thrown him away. She had broken him; Jessica had told her as much. 

So she did not have the right to want him anymore. 

In any case, the murders. Betty had gone back to the coroner's reports again and again, and finally, something stuck out to her. 

She laid one file out on the table, another beside it. 

_ Probable time of death - 10 PM to 11 PM  _ one read.

_ Probable time of death - 9 PM to 11 PM  _ read another. 

The victims had died on the same day. One was Nancy Woods, clearly a reference to Betty. But the other was Robert Tisch, the upscale socialite. Some bodies had taken time to be found, so they hadn’t yet looked at the date and time of death. But they were close. Too close, really. Too close to be the work of one person. 

Betty flips through the files, heart pounding in that invigorating way it always did when there was a break in the case. 

“There’s more than one killer,” she breathes. 

This feels like something that has to be shared with Jughead, but she doesn’t know what to do with the relief she hears in his voice when he picks up her call. 

They’re down in the bunker before she knows it, and Betty can feel her heart pounding. 

She hasn’t been there since last time—just the next in a long list of things that are different now. Even in the last few weeks, the bunker had felt like a sanctuary. Like something intimate and personal, belonging just to them.

Then Jessica had come in and shattered that illusion, and now things were forever different, even as they sit in the same position as before, poring over the case files. 

It makes a startling amount of sense, now that she sees it. Who would be an enemy of all four of them? No, it made much more sense to have a team, two or more people working together to take them down. They go over the case notes with a fine-tooth comb: five victims, each one for one of them, and one spare. 

The first victim, the boxer. He was a former army officer, found by a runner in the morning. The medical examiner put his time of death shortly before he was found. His killing could best be described as methodical. Like someone routinely following steps until their victim was dead. This killer was neat, organized. 

Their second victim, the brunette woman. She seemed to be a circumstantial kill. Her killing was messy and disorganized, and she was killed the night before she’s found. The signatures of both murders are so different that while it could be the same killer, Betty doubts it very much. 

The third and fourth victims, Robert Tisch and Jessie Stephens. A well-liked socialite and a writer, born on October 2nd. Their kills are different from each other as well. Robert’s killer cut deep like they were trying to make him pay for a perceived sin. He was a large man, and he was killed close to the site he was found, as if the killer couldn’t drag him away. He was killed in the early evening, as was Jessie Stephens, in a completely different site. Betty remembers hearing about murders like Jessie’s from her criminology professors. They would call it a “psychosexual component.” Jessie didn’t have a close boyfriend or a recent ex, so they hadn’t pursued it, but there was an unquestionably angry element to her murder. Or, metaphorically, Jughead’s murder. 

And then, Nancy. This one felt calculated, cruel. Like they targeted Nancy specifically. Like they looked for a way to hurt Betty. That’s a signature none of the other murders share. 

It’s about them, the four of them. This means Veronica and Archie need to know, and they need to be the ones to tell them. 

They arrange the meeting to be at Pops. Private, but still public.

She invites Archie, and Jughead invites Veronica. They make it clear that it’s serious, that they wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. 

And when Betty pushes open the door at Pops, her heart is pounding so hard she feels like it may beat out of her chest. 

He’s there. She can see Jughead at the booth. Not the same booth they used to sit at, of course. But a booth. She slides in beside him, giving him a wide berth. This is still one of the first times they’ve been in the same space since she vowed to stay away from him. He sends her a tiny smile, and something erupts inside her stomach, something she needs to quash right away. 

“So, she says. “Did she...agree to come?”

Jughead nods. “Yeah. She said she’d be here by three.”

Betty checks the clock. It’s 2:57, three minutes to three. In three minutes, she’ll be face to face with her former best friend for the first time in seven years. She does not count their chance encounter in front of Pops as actually seeing her. This time, she’ll be breathing the same air as Veronica Lodge. 

Her heart speeds up more, so much to the point that Betty thinks she may faint. 

“Archie said he’d be here by three as well,” she forces out. Jughead’s spine stiffens, and he gives a short nod. 

The bell over the door rings, and both of their heads snap up. It’s them. Betty tries to force her breathing to steady as she takes in the long, shiny black hair of Veronica Lodge. She looks good. Different, in the way all of them do. She carries herself straighter now, her eyes up higher. More accurately, her eyes on anything except Betty. 

Stiffly, she smooths her skirt down and sits in the seat opposite Jughead. 

And then the bell rings again, and Archie walks through. His steps seem purposely slow. Betty wonders if he ran into Veronica outside and just waited to give her the appropriate space. He sits across from Betty, and she swears she can feel Jughead tensing further, even if she’s not beside him. 

So they sit. They sit and try not to remember the last time all four of them were here. The smiles and laughter that feature in that memory were no longer. Pops, for the four of them, used to feel like a place of neutrality. A place to forget the insanity that assaulted them daily. Now, though, Betty thinks it’s simply another reminder of what they’ve lost. 

The reverie is broken when Jughead slides a folder onto the table and looks at Betty expectantly. 

Betty clears her throat. “Unfortunately,” she says, willing her voice to steady, “we’ve gotten a break in our...in this case, and now it involves you.”

Nobody says anything, so Betty gulps down the lump in her throat and continues. “We think we’re dealing with multiple killers. Two or more, and they seem to have a personal vendetta against each of us. We’ve already had several murders that seem to suggest they want to target people close to us.”

Veronica doesn’t look at her, not anywhere near her, but she does appear to be listening. “We?” she says, and her voice is cold. Her voice doesn’t remind Betty in any way of the Veronica that held her after the Black Hood was unmasked, passing her fingers through Betty’s hair and telling her that this wasn’t her fault, that nobody blamed her.

Veronica blames her now, and with good reason. 

“We..” Jughead cuts in. “We are working together on the case.” 

Archie casts his eyes between them. “Together?”

Archie has always been her warmest friend. The boy who wore his heart on his sleeve. None of them are used to the way he sits, shoulders straight, refusing to look at anyone, thumb picking at the edge of the table.

It’s awkward between all of them. She wonders if it will always be. 

“FBI,” she offers. “Jughead is consulting.” 

Archie gives a jerking nod. She can’t even read his face to see what he’s thinking. 

They give the most basic of case details, as well as the standard warnings. Don’t go anywhere alone, be on the lookout, don’t trust people new to your life. 

Veronica nods. “Fine. Is that all?” It’s a tone befitting of a business meeting. 

Betty nods. “I guess...I guess that’s it. But, Veronica…”

“I think we’re done here,” Veronica says, and before Betty can call out, she turns on her heel and walks away. 

  
  
  


**Veronica**

She’s a Lodge and a Gecko. She refuses, abjectly refuses to rush out of the diner like some sort of jilted mistress. She refuses to let them see her pulse pounding beneath her skin, or her eyes fill up with tears. No. Nobody else got that. She was above that. 

However, that doesn’t seem to have been communicated to her tear ducts because as soon as she’s out of range of Pops, the tears flow anyway. 

Veronica lays a hand on her chest, trying to gain control of her breath. Trying to get her emotions back under control. 

She’s not sure what it is. Maybe it’s Riverdale, maybe it’s the full force of the last seven years, maybe being here has made the long-closed wound that was her boyfriend and best friend’s betrayal open up again, but Veronica feels a full mix of absolute  _ anger _ that she is apparently not over this, and the deep sadness she thought she had left behind.

She estimates it at less than ten minutes that they were all together again. In a booth at Pops, like it used to be. Like she sometimes used to imagine it would be forever. But this wasn’t like it used to be. Now, she could feel the tension in everyone, the words on the tip of their tongues, and the brokenness that was in all of them now. 

She felt like she was choking on it, could barely get through Betty’s FBI-issued warnings before she needed to be somewhere, anywhere else.    
  


She sits down on a bench and breathes. 

_ In, out. In, out. Everything’s okay now. It’s over.  _

(It  _ is _ over.) 

She dabs her replacement handkerchief under her eyes, swallows the full load of medication assigned for today.

She thinks of Chad, of how he’d swept in with gifts and his own comforting presence. The way he’d joked with her about bringing her multivitamins. 

_ Truly the sexiest of gifts, baby _ , she had purred. 

He had laughed.  _ Anything for my woman,  _ he had said, dropping a multivitamin into each pill slot. 

It’s that domesticity that she cherishes with him, when it’s there. When there’s no fights, no pressure, no expectations. Out of Riverdale, in the real world. 

From behind her, Veronica hears a wolf-whistle and a voice saying, “ _ damn _ , Lodge. What’s with the hot mess?”

Snapping her head around, she almost collapses in relief at the sight of Reggie Mantle, flopping into the seat beside her. 

He’s barely down before she’s throwing her arms around him. 

“Reg,” she sighs. “Thank god you’re here.” 

He clicks his tongue. “Anywhere V. Lodge needs him, Reggie Mantle will be.” 

She laughs. “In New York, as it is in Riverdale. What are you doing back here?” 

Reggie shrugs. “Annual guilt-trip visit. Visited my old man in the joint. Now my mom, if she can stomach a full conversation without choking on her own guilt.” 

Veronica rubs his shoulder sympathetically. Reggie was one of the only parts of Riverdale she’d allowed herself to keep, after. He’d been in New York too, at Fordham, and she was ever thankful for his presence. 

Despite their history, Reggie was never more than friendly to her, and she desperately needed that. They spent time together, even falling into bed a few times, but he never pressured her. He was here for what she needed, whatever that may be. 

Spending time with Reggie was fun and easy. A memory of her past that wasn’t tied to pain. So they spent time together. He was her friend. Less so when Chad came along, and began monopolizing Veronica’s time. Sometimes she could see Reggie wanting to say something, but he never did. 

She valued him more than many in her life. Sometimes, in the world of business, she needed Reggie to make her feel human. 

And that is never more necessary than now. She leans into him and sighs heavily. He passes a hand up and down her arm. 

“Rough day?”

She nods. “You could say that.” 

“Well,” he says. “What do we always do when we have a rough day?”

She looks down at her watch. “Reggie, it’s barely 4 pm. It’s way too early to go drinking.” 

He frowns at her, jumping up and extending his hand. “Well, with that limiting attitude, it is! Come on, Lodge. You look like you could use a drink right now, and I could sure as hell use some liquid courage before visiting my mom.” 

  
  
  


**Cheryl**

Riverdale, as always, remained painfully dull. Cheryl Marjorie Blossom had always known she was made for bigger than this town, but now the size felt stifling. There was no good reason Cheryl should be looking around every corner, scanning every place she went before venturing in. She was Cheryl Blossom. People parted like the Red Sea when she walked down the hallway. That should never change. 

Except it had. 

Because now, Cheryl was decidedly hiding at home, and when she did go out, she was scanning the crowd. 

Not for anyone in particular, of course. And certainly, not for Toni. 

Oh no. Cheryl had moved on. In fact, she had moved past “on.” So far past “on” that she was lapping it for the second time. 

Cheryl was a graduate of the Parsons New School for Design, a school that hosted the likes of Tom Ford and Alexander Wang. Cheryl had traveled the world and had seen success in both her career and her personal life.

There were many women. Fashion models, almost exclusively. Women fell into her bed and never left unsatisfied. Women fell at her feet, as they rightly should. Cheryl Blossom deserved only the best, and that was what she got. 

And she would never,  _ ever _ reduce herself to thinking about her high school girlfriend in her small town. 

Cheryl didn’t come home often. Home held too many memories, few of them good, and there was so much to see in the world. Paris, London, Tokyo. Cheryl had spent her post-graduation years traveling, and it had been good. 

There was just  _ sometimes _ . Sometimes when the parties were over, and the women were gone, Cheryl was alone, in an expansive apartment. Her thoughts tended to wander, and  _ sometimes _ , they wandered to Toni. 

Which was ridiculous. She and Toni had broken up over three years ago, and surely, by now, the image of pink hair stuck to a tear-stained face should be out of her mind. She shouldn’t hear the whispered “it’s over” when she closed her eyes. 

But  _ sometimes _ , even losing herself in a beautiful woman didn’t erase Toni from her mind. 

They don’t see each other, even when Cheryl is back in Riverdale. The day of Nana Rose’s funeral severs all ties Cheryl has to Riverdale. The funeral is small. Cousin Betty comes, as does FP Jones, and a few of the people she’s known since high school. Veronica calls her every day, sends her cards and flowers. She feels well supported. 

But at the funeral, she catches a glimpse of pink hair, and there is Toni, looking at her. 

Cheryl hears her name on a soft exhalation. Toni looks good. Her hair is still pink. It looks soft. She gets the urge to run her hands through it but clenches them at her sides. They’re nothing anymore. 

Toni takes one step forward, and Cheryl runs. She runs to the car, doesn’t look back, and swipes angrily at the tears with one hand. Her mascara drips onto her hands, and she clamps her hand over her mouth.

She shouldn’t feel this.

_ She shouldn’t feel this. _

  
  
  


She never asks if Toni is still single. She never asks because she doesn’t want to hear the answer. 

That time is bad, but it’s nothing compared to the next time. The next time, Cheryl walks into the Riverdale Library. It’s broad daylight, and it’s not like this place is ever overly populated. She wrinkles her nose at the musty smell, but it feels safe. It feels like a place not to run into one’s past. 

So of course,  _ obviously _ , she sees the glint of pink hair from a mile away, and Cheryl Blossom, HBIC, ducks behind a stack of books, peering between two of them. It’s undeniably, Toni. She has her legs crossed and a giant book in front of her. 

She looks peaceful, if tired. There are bags under her eyes. Cheryl wants to tuck her in somewhere, a stupid thought she quickly crushes. Her heart races at the sight of her former love, at the person she was sure she’d spend her life with. 

How the mighty fall. Like Cheryl nearly does when Toni closes the book and rises, and Cheryl sees it. 

Her belly is full. It curves, even under the loose top. 

Cheryl’s brain struggles around the word. 

_ Pregnant _ . Toni’s pregnant. 

The book she’s holding tumbles to the floor with a crash. Toni’s eyes jerk up, and she rounds the shelf with a surprising speed for someone in her condition. Cheryl wants to run, would run if she had the capability. But she doesn’t. Shock keeps her firmly pinned to the floor until Toni staggers to her knees and holds a hand out. 

Her eyes are a soft brown. Cheryl remembers staring into that brown. 

“Cheryl,” she hears. “Hi.”

She knows what she should be doing. She should formulate a snippy response because she was Cheryl. That’s what she should want to do. She shouldn’t want to reach out and take Toni’s hand, touch her rounded belly. 

But her eyes rest on that belly regardless. Toni’s eyes go there too, and there’s silence for a moment, before she finally  _ finally _ finds her voice. 

“Well,” she says. “I suppose some would say congratulations are in order.” 

Toni’s mouth quirks in a tiny smile. “I guess,” she says.

Cheryl staggers to her feet, trying to regain a shred of her lost dignity.

“Really. Many happy returns to you and the no doubt edgelord you have wedded. A new generation awaits.”

Toni gives that tiny smirk, the one she used to give Cheryl. “It’s not what you think, Cheryl.”

Cheryl lays a hand on her chest. “Oh,  _ surely _ not. Surely this relationship is different. Truly, this is the fairy tale love of the southside to aspire to. Have you considered adapting this very touching story to film?”

“I’m telling you, Cheryl, it’s not what you think. This - “ she lays a hand on her belly, rubbing gently. “This is not mine. Well, I guess it is mine, but it’s not forever.”

This is a confusing statement. Hers, but not hers?

“Surrogate, Cheryl. I’m a surrogate,” Toni fills in gently. “Rich couple offered $40,000 for a healthy baby. Money I couldn’t turn down, that the  _ Serpents _ couldn’t turn down.”

The Serpents. “So you’re back with...them?”

She nods. “Serpent Queen, by default.” 

Cheryl straightens her spine. “Well,” she bites. “Congratulations, then. I suppose we’ve all had success—me, graduating from a prestigious fashion school. You, being impregnated for a biker gang. Who’s to say who won this breakup, really?”

Toni lays a hand on Cheryl’s arm, and she’s reminded of a time almost a decade ago.

_ Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong, because clearly, you’re in a lot of pain.  _

Then, and now, Toni knows her. Toni knows her lashing out in pain. And this time, much like last time, she rips Toni’s hands away, tells her to get off, and walks away with the last ounces of dignity she can scrounge up.

Also, like then, the spot Toni touches her tingles for hours afterward. 

  
  


**Jughead**

Betty calls him, after. He’s sitting in the bunker, staring at the murder board, and he sees her name flash across the screen, a sight that instantly sets his traitorous heart pounding. 

He presses the accept button with shaking fingers. He hadn’t seen her since she’d gathered her belongings and strode out of the diner, not a word to him other than telling him she’d “be in touch.” 

It’s the next in a long list of tautologies that make him feel like he’s a business colleague to her, a feeling he loathes with everything in him. 

“Betty?”

“Hello, Jughead,” she says, and her voice is the same as it was when she’d left.

“I wondered if I could come down for a moment. I’m in the woods now, and I had something I needed for the case.” 

He briefly wonders if that was a euphemism. Likely not, but his brain is foggy with vodka and false hope.

“S..sure,” he coughs. “Come on down.” 

It’s a bit of a mystery to him why he’s feeling like this. Perhaps it’s because she  _ asked _ him if she could come. Maybe she wants to see him. As he hears the hatch open, and her footfalls on the ladder, a part of him undeniably hopes so. 

But then she’s standing in front of him and asking for the case files. 

  
  
  


The files. He’d had them before. He remembers that, in a distant, foggy vision. He had them in the bunker, or maybe at the house. 

He whirls around and begins searching the bunker, under the bed, under the piles of folders. 

They’re not there. Nor, surely, are they in his hotel room.

“Just wait a sec,” he mumbles. “I know I have them somewhere.” 

Technically, it’s an accurate statement. He does have them somewhere. He just has no recollection of where that somewhere may be. Not since the diner, and the vodka consumed to deal with being all together, and seeing Archie sit next to Betty. Something that he shouldn’t care about, but that message was apparently not communicated to his brain, because all he can think about is them in this very bunker. Kissing, Archie’s hand under Betty’s shirt, no thoughts of him in either of their minds. 

He feels more and more panicked the more he searches, his legs wobbling under him as he checks under the bed. 

“Sorry,” he gasps. “I was a bit careless, I guess.” 

Betty looks at him hard. He feels as if he’s under a microscope, like everything inside of him is visible.

“You weren’t careless,” she says slowly. “You  _ aren’t _ careless, not with evidence. Not with evidence that could now have fallen into the hands of our killers.” 

He feels his face burn, for more reasons than one. It was a mistake, a stupid mistake. A mistake he is not used to making. He’s the detective; he’s supposed to be the one that finds things, not the one that loses them. 

And right now, Betty’s gaze is making him squirm. There’s a light in her eyes as if she’s just figuring something out. It’s a look he’s seen a million times, as her brilliant brain turns a corner and comes to a revelation. This time, he’s on the receiving end of the revelation. 

He eyes the ground, rotates his toe into the floor, wants to be anywhere but here. 

“You weren’t just careless, Jughead. You were drunk. You’re drunk.”

Something rushes through him, white-hot. The words circle in his head, everything said and unsaid. 

_ You were drunk.  _

_ You lost them. _

_ You lost them because you were drunk. _

_ You’re just like him. _

“And you were drunk before. In the bunker, in Pops the last few days, even...when you were going through the case files, you were drunk. That’s why you were wobbling.”

“It wasn’t…” he’s not even sure how to finish that sentence. Yes, he was drunk, but she’s making it a bigger deal than it is, because it’s not a big deal. He has an occasional drink, so what? He needs it; he needs it to think. She just doesn’t understand.

“You’re drunk all the time,” she continues, like the very thread that ties their murder board together. 

“More often than not. And that’s why you lost the casefiles. You could have given all our evidence to the killers, Jug, because you were drunk.”

She steps closer to him, sniffs the air. 

“You’re drunk now. You weren’t before, but you are now.”

It’s the implication that his being drunk makes him incompetent, he thinks. Makes him FP. And he is not FP. But it sends a rage boiling through him. It fills him. He feels himself throbbing, feels the alcohol waft through his mind, clearing it of everything but the  _ rage  _ he feels, even if he doesn’t understand why. It replaces the blood in his veins. It fuels him, and his hand jets out and grabs her arm.

He just needs her to stop, to stop talking, to go away, to drop this and leave it forever. But his brain can’t control his muscles, and his muscles squeeze into her arm, hard. 

“Stop it,” he growls. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She tries to yank her arm away, but he won’t let go. He feels his nails dig in, just a bit. 

Betty pulls at his hand with hers, but still, he doesn’t let go. 

“Stop it,” he says again. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She looks at him, and it’s a different look than before. This time, her eyes hold no trust. This time, she looks scared. Of him, for him, he’s not sure.

“Let go of me,” she hisses. “Jug, this isn’t you.”

He can hear the rushing in his ears; he can feel it color his vision. He can feel the marks his hands are leaving. And then his mouth barks out the words, hard and cruel. 

His mouth tells her to shut the fuck up. 

He doesn’t even recognize the sound. 

It hangs between both of them, like  _ you could love me again _ , but so, so different. 

With one grab, Betty yanks his hand off her arm, and she looks at him. Her eyes are wide and bright, before she turns on her heel and races away. 

  
  
  
  
  


Jessica’s still working on her laptop when he gets home. He’s grateful, it had been a day stuffed to the brim with emotions, and he doesn’t really want to field any questions about it right now. 

He makes himself dinner, grabs himself a beer without thinking about it, and then sits at the kitchen table, staring at it. 

_ Let go of me! _ There was fear in those words, fear he put there. There are surely marks on Betty’s arms now. He put those there as well. 

But he didn’t mean to. He would never, could never mean to hurt her. He just wanted her to stop. He just wanted her to drop this, to get out of his face, to not look at him like he was a subject on one of those case files, because he wasn’t. He was fine.

And anything that was not fine about him, anything he did or said, it came at least partially from her betrayal. This fire, this burn inside his veins, it was never there before her. The drinking was, though. 

Jughead wasn’t stupid. Jughead had grown up with an alcoholic father, so he knew the signs of alcohol abuse. He knew how to spot an addict, and he wasn’t one. He just needed a drink to relax on occasion, and that was hardly a crime. That was hardly the sign of an addict. He didn’t beat anyone. He didn’t lose jobs. He didn’t have everyone looking at me like they knew something about him he didn’t. 

Except, his brain reminds him that he had not been able to write a successful follow-up, to date, and his editors had given up. The soft, wonderful, lubricating feeling the alcohol had given him was gone, and despite him drinking more and more, it never came back.

And then, there were the shakes. And the headaches. Easily attributable to stress, but what if they weren’t?

Then the lost case files, and his fingers, digging into Betty’s arm. His voice, yelling at her. 

He’s squeezing the beer bottle so hard he can feel his fingers going numb, and then he jumps up before he can think about it too much, and shoves it back in the fridge.

He flops back down in the chair, scratching at the grain of the table’s wood, lost in thought until Jessica crashes into the kitchen. 

Looking at the pots and pans, she smiles at him.

“Oh, you made dinner!” she says.

In fact, he had. Just not for her. His brain was just at processing capacity today, and he hadn’t even considered making her dinner. 

Her shoulders sink when she realizes. He apologizes quickly, and she pastes a smile he knows is forced onto her face. 

“It’s fine, Jughead,” she says. “It’s just…”

  
“It’s just what?”

“I just...sometimes I feel like you’re not...trying.”

He’s confused. “Jess, I spent a whole day trying to solve multiple murders. I don’t really see how that’s not trying.”

She huffs out a breath. “Not with the case, Jughead. God knows, I know how obsessed you are with that case. With us.”

“Us?”

She nods and sits herself in his lap. “I came all the way out here, Jug, to make this work. And I’m trying, I’m really trying, because I love you and I want this to work. And I think it  _ can _ work, but I just...don’t see that effort from you.”

He imagines he should feel guilty. He does, in a way. Jessica has unquestionably been trying, and he knows she’s here for him. She’s pretty and smart and kind, and Jughead loves her. But he also feels exhausted. Too exhausted to be having this same conversation over and over, today of all days. Today, when all that goes through his mind is  _ let go of me _ , and terrified green eyes. 

“I’m sorry, Jess. I’ll try harder.”

It does not seem to mollify her. She pushes out of his lap in a huff and yanks open the fridge, grabbing out some pasta sauce and a beer. 

Jughead feels almost as if the beer is staring at him as she slides it across the table to him. 

“Here. Drink that, and then we can actually talk.”

Especially given his earlier thoughts, it’s an odd request. “What?”

She nods at the beer. “Drink. You always think better with some beer in you.”

Jughead looks down at the beer, feels the condensation seep into his hand. “You don’t...have an issue with that?”

Jessica shrugs. “You’re an artist. Sometimes artists need a little prodding to work.”

His thumb moves to crack the beer open, but for some reason, cannot complete the gesture. 

“Jess, I’m just...I’m tired. I don’t really want to talk about it.” 

“See, that’s just it,” she cries. “You don’t want to talk about it! You never do! You’re always tired or busy, or god forbid, working. You never want to talk to me!” 

“Jess, you’re my girlfriend! I talk to you about everything!”

She shakes her head. “You used to. You always held some things back, but before...you’d talk to me because you  _ wanted  _ to, not because you had to.”

His head is pounding. He lays it in his hands, his thoughts a mess, Jessica’s voice reverberating in his head. 

  
“Then why are you even here? Why are you  _ trying _ ?” 

She looks at him incredulously before rising sharply to her feet and switching off the stove. 

“Because I care about you, Jughead. And I’m hoping that somewhere, deep down, in a part you’ll be able to access someday, you'll care about me just as much.”

That’s all she says as she stomps out of the room. And that’s all he hears before he grabs his jacket off the hook and flies out the door. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


His head is still throbbing, and he is not even thinking of where to go, before he’s knocking on the door of a closed Pops. 

The girl from earlier comes out, gesturing to the “Closed” sign. 

He can only imagine how he must look, soaked in sweat, hair plastered to his forehead and gasping for breath. 

“Please,” he says. “I won’t even order.”

The girl smacks her lips around the lollipop. “Not exactly what closed means, buddy.”

His head droops, and he’s about to give up before he hears the other voice calling his name. 

“Jughead?” 

His head snaps to the source. “Veronica?”

She squeezes out the door, and he takes in her puffy-eyed gaze and exhausted posture. 

“You okay?” she says. 

There is truly nothing in him left to lie. 

“No,” he breathes. “You?”

She shakes her head. “Not excessively.”

Veronica looks around to Tabitha, then grabs Jughead’s arm (he nearly pulls away, given the flashback it provokes). 

“Come on,” she says, leading him to the old phone and pushing open the speakeasy door. “Down here.”

  
  


**Betty**

Pops is closed. Betty’s not surprised, it’s late, and times, as she so well knows, are different now. But it’s cold, and she shivers against her thin jacket. She should go back to her hotel and call it a night, but something in her can’t. Her fingers rub against the light marks on her forearm. Her mind goes back again and again to Jughead. To the glazed, angry look. To the way he made her feel.

Afraid is never something she’s felt around Jughead. 

Again and again, she thinks about the night they were chased through the woods by Penelope Blossom, the way he took her home and held her against him, told her he loved her over and over.

Is that even the same person as the person that grabbed her with violence in his eyes?

She shivers again, and suddenly, there’s a coat offered to her and Archie Andrews in front of her. 

Betty shakes her head, but Archie repeats the gesture. 

“Take it,” he says. “You’re cold.”

“I’m fine.” It’s so far from the truth. Nothing is fine right now.

They hear the sound of a lock turning behind them, and then Tabitha Tate is in the door, beckoning both of them in and to a booth. As the door closes behind them, they hear her mutter, “does anyone understand what the word closed means?”

Betty and Archie slide into a booth in silence. 

His shoulders slump. He doesn’t look like the Archie she knew. Betty feels tears fill her eyes. Can’t one thing, anything, be as it was? She never planned for this when she kissed Archie. She never thought it would taint every little thing.

His fingers rest near hers. 

“You okay?” he asks. 

For once, she doesn’t lie. She shakes her head, and Archie nods. “Me either,” he says. 

Silence fills the room, but all the words are inside Betty like a bubble, filling her up, like she might burst any minute. 

“Do you regret it?” she says. “What we did?”

Archie exhales long through his nose. “Yes. How could I not?”

She nods. “Did we ever think we were doing the right thing?”   
  


“Once, maybe. Maybe we weren’t thinking. But it exploded everything, didn’t it, Betty?”

It did. Like an atomic bomb over their lives. 

“It still is. He’s different, now.”

Archie nods. “She’s  _ married. _ ” 

That sentence hurts. Thinking about Veronica getting married without her, it hurts like so many other things do. 

“And it didn’t just ruin that, did it?” he says, always more honest than her. “It ruined us too.”

She doesn’t disagree. She can’t; he’s right—her oldest friend, now a stranger. 

“Did it ruin us forever?”

Betty doesn’t know. She wants to say no. She wants to be the same as she was. But she has no idea how to talk to Archie now. She has no idea how to bridge that gap. 

She thinks back to a tiny Archie, with earnest eyes, hair sticking straight up, dirt on his shirt, asking her to marry him. Then this Archie, straight shouldered and stiff, eyes haunted. She doesn’t know how to reconcile the two. Maybe she never will. 

She moves her fingers, so they cover his, just slightly. “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe sometimes...there are things we have to let go.”

She sees the shine of tears in his eyes, but he nods, eyes cast down at the Formica countertop. 

“It was good, though, wasn’t it? All that time, when we were growing up together, it was good?”

Betty smiles, a real genuine smile this time. 

“Yeah,” she says. “It was good.”

A door slams audibly behind them, and Betty feels the one inside of them, the Betty and Archie door, close too. 

  
  


**Jughead**

It’s dusty down in the old speakeasy. His nose clogs immediately as Veronica runs a rag over the table and dunks two glasses down with a bottle of rum. 

“The cure for what ails all of us,” she sighs, and Jughead is exhausted, in a bone-tired way that encompasses his whole being. Far too tired to protest, he sits down, letting off a cloud of dust, and takes a glass. Veronica clinks hers against his, and they drink. He doesn’t ask her what’s wrong; she doesn’t ask him. They simply drink, and then they drink more. 

More and more and more, until Jughead feels light and fuzzy, and they’ve migrated to leaning against the wall by the bar. 

Finishing what he estimates to be his fifth glass, he lolls his head over to look at her. 

“Shouldn’t you be at home with your husband?” he says. She shoves her shoulder into his, eyes cast down.

“Shouldn’t you be with your girlfriend? And, you know, not working with your ex?”

Jughead groans, whacking his head lightly against the counter. “That stuck out, didn’t it?”

Veronica gives a drunken laugh. “Yeah, it stuck out. What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t given much of a choice, Veronica. My dad asked me to. And there are people being killed. They deserve justice.”

She nods slowly. “I guess. Can’t be easy, though.”

“It’s not.” Nothing about this is easy. Nothing at all. “And you? I’m getting that you didn’t tell Archie about this,” he says, gesturing to her ring. 

She shakes her head. “He found out, though. One skating rink and a million cups of hot chocolate later, he knows.”

Jughead furrows his brow. “That some kind of code?”

Veronica laughs, patting him on the cheek. “Nothing you need to worry about, love.”

There’s silence for a moment, then he asks. “Are you happy?”

She’s quiet, then a slow nod. “I think so. Are you?”

He shrugs. “Who can tell anymore?” 

Staggering to her feet, Veronica pours them both another glass. Jughead feels delightfully sleepy, like he could rest here forever. 

“Do you think we ever will be happy, Ronnie? Like, really happy?”

He can tell she’s well and truly drunk, because she sniffles. “I was happy before. At least, I thought I was. But that feels like a lifetime ago.”   
  


It truly does. It feels like another him, a him that trusted. A him that Betty didn’t look at in fear. He swirls the ice cubes around in his glass, her face still in his mind. A drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts; people always said. He certainly feels that now. 

He feels it as he heaves a sigh. “I can’t...I can’t remember a time I didn’t love her.”

Veronica looks at him, tears in her eyes, tears that tell him she knows he’s not talking about Jessica. She crawls next to him, rests her head on his shoulder. 

“He made me feel human,” she says. “Even when...everyone looked at me like this spoiled rich girl, he made me feel human. And however it ended, I...I held onto that.” 

He sighs. “Do you think we’re too young to...have this much regret?”

She doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. But he does regret. He regrets so much. 

The moment is heavy. Veronica breathes deeply from her position with her head on Jughead’s shoulder. He lays a hand on her leg, filled up to the brim. 

_ Betty. Betty. Betty.  _

It loops in his head. She’s all he thinks about. Drunk, or sober, he thinks about her. He thinks about going to her, apologizing, begging for forgiveness. Begging to start over.  _ Could  _ they even start over now?

He doesn’t know, but he wants to find out.

Slowly, unsteadily, he rises to his feet. Veronica looks at him quizzically. 

  
“It shouldn’t be over, Veronica,” he says. “It shouldn’t be over until we say it’s over. Even if it’s hard. Even if it’s scary. It shouldn’t be over until the feelings stop, and the feelings haven’t stopped. Have they stopped for you?”

Tears leak onto her cheeks, and she shakes her head. Jughead nods. “So we go. We go talk to the other people in our lives, and then we go to talk to them.”

“It’s not that simple, Jughead. We’re drunk, and I’m married, and..”

“It  _ is _ ,” he insists. “It is that simple. Now, are you with me?” 

He holds out his hand, and reluctantly, very reluctantly, Veronica places hers in it. They stumble unsteadily up the stairs and creak open the door. 

It’s right in front of him, in front of them, as soon as they turn the corner. 

Betty and Archie sit right in front of them, hand in hand, smiling softly. 

He feels drunk, and dumb, in equal volumes, more so than he has in awhile. Tugging on Veronica’s hand, he drags her out the back, slamming the door behind them. 

  
  
  
  


Jessica is asleep when he gets back, but this can’t wait. As gently as possible, he shakes her awake. 

She blinks at him sleepily. “Jug?”

“You were right, Jess. You were right about everything. I haven’t tried, but I will now. I’m trying. I’m committed. I want this, I want you and me, always.”

Her answering smile is blinding, and she pulls him in, sealing her lips to his. 

  
  


**?**

It doesn’t take away the feeling. It’s immensely frustrating. He never asked for this feeling to take over his body. He never wanted it to linger, even after the man is gone. But it does. His fingers still ache to touch him, and seeing the life drain from the girl’s doesn’t help.

Number one tells him to tap Jellybean’s phone, so he does. She’ll be back soon. And once he does his job, she’ll be back alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes:
> 
> \- I hope you didn't think Cheryl was too harsh. Cheryl lashes out when she's hurt because it's all she knows. Nobody knows that more than Toni.   
> \- Also, I hope the Barchie scene was clear: they are breaking up in a way? I think they can realize what they are to each other but also realize they're never going to be the same as they were. That's part of being an adult.  
> \- REGGIE! I love him  
> \- Any guesses who the killers are? Or who the next victim will be?


	7. could you cry a little?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Please, Betty,” he says softly. “It’s our parents’ wedding. One dance?”
> 
> It’s a long wait before she nods hesitatingly, and he doesn’t even dare take her hand to guide her to the dancefloor. In fact, they more closely resemble middle schoolers as he moves his hands to her waist. She shivers anyway, and he feels it go through him too. 
> 
> She lays her hands on his shoulders, palms over, so they move a fraction closer. 
> 
> Neither speak until she finally asks. “You okay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa, nelly. 
> 
> You know how there's always one chapter that you've worked endlessly on but it STILL doesn't feel right? Or it still feels poorly written though you have edited and re-edited it? 
> 
> Well, here she is, folks. At least this time she's okay like 7.5k words. I thought the timeline may be confusing, so I added some references to when it occurs. I wanted to get this out before the premiere, but if you're interested in hearing my S5 thoughts, see the end notes. 
> 
> Also, here we find tons of internal monologue and not too much case. It'll pick up in the next chapter, I swear, as will Betty POV!

_ If I had just one tear running down your cheek  
Maybe I could cope maybe I'd get some sleep  
If I had just one moment at your expense  
Maybe all my misery would be well spent _

* * *

Jughead, 1 Day Until Wedding. 

He’s going to have to talk to her. He knows it. Eventually, he’ll have to see her. He’ll have to see  _ them _ . 

He’s thought of nothing else for three days. He sees her hand stroking Archie’s, sees their knees pressed together, their soft smiles, and the thought is more painful than the pounding headache and sandpaper throat he woke up with the next day. The painful round of vomiting that followed was, he thinks, only due in part to the alcohol. 

In his head swirls a terrifying mix of Betty and Archie at the diner, and Betty and Archie in the bunker, seven years ago. The way it was always meant to be. He feels so profoundly stupid for ever thinking it could be anything less than over. That night as he ran away from Veronica, against her shouting out for him to come back, he’d finished the entire bottle of rum before he’d talked to Jessica and a tiny flask of vodka after it.

It hadn’t worked, because he woke up, and he remembered the entire thing. 

And he hasn’t spoken to Betty. She hasn’t reached out, but why would she? Any moment he isn’t thinking of her and Archie, he thinks of his fingers digging into her arm and the words he flung at her. 

_ Shut the fuck up.  _

He doesn’t expect her to forgive him. He scared her. He, who held her hand every single moment after Hal Cooper’s death. He’d let go for one single moment as she got ready to shower, and her whimpers started immediately. 

_ No, Jug, please don’t leave me _ . 

He’d grabbed her hand again, soothed her, pulled her into his arms. 

That was then, and that was when he held her gently, like the precious thing she was. That was before his nails mark her arm and his words scar her.

It’s all he can think about. 

So, he supposes, it’s fortunate that so close to the wedding, and with Jessica, he doesn’t have ample time to think. Jessica is buzzing. She is touching him at all hours, her fingers winding into his hair, feet in his lap, body pressed to his at all hours. 

It’s warm, in a way. 

She’s bought a dress for the wedding tomorrow, and she looks pretty. 

  
That’s what he thinks when he sees her. She looks pretty. He tells her as much, and she smiles at him. He breathes easily. 

Alice, however, does not. Jughead would best describe her current state as roadrunner-like. She is never in the same place for more than a second, and he does fail to see how this wedding, described multiple times as a “small, relaxed wedding” is either of those things. She cleans until the floors literally sparkle, picking up everything that could conceivably need to be tidied, including the fork that still contained his lunch, stopping its trajectory to his mouth. 

He can almost imagine a cartoon tornado around her, and she very closely resembles the Alice Cooper of a decade ago, the one that stared at him unflinchingly as he gobbled down as much breakfast as he could possibly hold. That Alice was colder. He’s gotten to know a new Alice post-Hal.

This one still scares him, but not as much as she did. 

He keeps a wide berth, but his heart pounds when she gets too close. 

That is until his father bravely strides up to her and wraps her in his arms, stroking through her hair and whispering to her. Jughead sees Alice sag against his father, and he’s pretty sure he catches tears in her eyes as she pulls away, laying a hand on FP’s cheek and kissing him gently. He looks down, feeling as if he is intruding on a private moment.

But it’s unlike both of them, or at least, the them he once knew. If he were to think about it, and he tries not to, he imagines that showing how people in love make each other better. 

* * *

Jughead, Wedding Day

The wedding is, in fact, small. He wishes it weren’t because there is a very palpable awkwardness between him and too many people. He can’t even sit in the back because FP had insisted he be in the wedding.

“Who else but you, Jug?” he says, and Jughead wants nothing to do with this wedding, but he can’t let his father down. 

Jellybean comes too. Jughead takes a long shower before he meets her and dabs on some cologne. She doesn’t seem to smell anything off, which calms his heart rate a little. She is bubbling with excitement at the prospect of them meeting Mel, who had to work last-minute but is driving up after. She’s breathlessly happy, and he’s happy for her, but it makes his chest ache a bit as he stands by his father and tries not to look at both the bridal party and the crowd. 

(He does, however, make the acquaintance of Chad Gekko, Veronica’s husband. He bears no loyalty toward Archie, but it’d still be a bit of an overstatement to call it a pleasure. This man looks at him in a way he is very used to. He looks at Jughead in a way everyone looked at him once, as the kid from the trailer park. But Veronica at least appears happy, and at the end of the day, Jughead’s learned to swallow a lot of gut feelings.) 

Both Jones children stand up next to their father under the ring of flowers, squeezing his hands as they recognize the nervousness that flows through him too. 

“You okay, Dad?” Jughead says, brushing some dirt of FP’s suit. 

FP clears his throat in a way that sounds almost teary. 

“I just,” he says gruffly. “I just can’t believe any of this is happening.” 

Jughead smiles. “Is it the overabundance of flowers? Doesn’t exactly scream your taste.”

FP gives a short laugh. “It made Alice happy, boy. They could be fly traps; I wouldn’t care. As long as she’s happy.” 

FP pauses for a moment, then looks at Jughead, his eyes red but shining. 

“We wasted so long, Jug. Thirty years after I thought this could happen, it finally is. I’m marryin’ Alice and moving out of Riverdale. Who would have thought, huh?”

There’s so much emotion in his voice that Jellybean reaches over and gives both him and FP a playful shove. 

“You two saps,” she says. “I should have brought a handkerchief for both of you.” 

* * *

Jughead has rarely known his father to be so emotional, but when he looks at Alice, his eyes never leave her. They write their own vows, and they talk about regret. Jughead remembers having these conversations with them. How it had to be this way, and perhaps it was best not to live in the past. But if they had been different people, if the world had been different, then maybe they could have had this moment of happiness earlier, instead of so much suffering. God knows, Jughead is aware of how rare this happiness is. It chokes his throat, with a feeling he doesn’t really know how to identify.

  
  


And, of course, also featured in the wedding party was Betty.

He sees her as the music begins to play, and he can’t see anything else. He’s sure people are looking at the bride, but beside her is Betty, and she looks so much like an angel that he forgets to breathe. 

  
He’s seen her dress before, of course, but now her hair floats around her shoulders, and her eyes are rimmed with a silvery color, and she looks right at him. He doesn’t understand what he’s feeling, but she’s beautiful. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


He feels like Icarus so much lately. Flying closer and closer to the sun, never learning his lesson. He feels the same heat he imagines Icarus must have as the wedding party retires. It surges through his veins, a kind of courage that walks his feet up to Betty. 

He needs to talk to her. He needs to  _ explain _ . What, he’s not sure. 

“Jug!” he hears. It’s experiencing a sense of deja vu to be going to Betty and suddenly have an arm full of Jessica. 

As is the look in Betty’s eyes as she watches them. 

* * *

Jessica loves to dance, and he, well, doesn’t. Back in high school, Betty would drag him out for a dance or two, but mostly, they’d sit near the food table and theorize about the latest mystery while judging their classmates. It’s still a favorite memory, though it, like all memories, is now tainted. 

He indulges Jessica for a dance or two, but finally, she spins off, talking to someone with black hair and laughing at the DJ’s selections. 

He tries not to look for Betty. Really, he doesn’t want to see her. But she’s hard to ignore. 

He watches her as she politely dances with anyone who asks and plays hostess the rest of the time. 

He also sees Veronica dance with her husband, her face pale. And Archie, sitting next to his mother and her wife. He tries not to look at Betty, and he sees Archie try not to look at Veronica. 

_ One match, and we’d all explode. _

* * *

  
  


On, until late into the night. Until she’s alone. He hasn’t drunk anything, and he thinks that’s probably why he feels so shaky, feels his heart pounding so hard. 

She’s alone, and he does it before he loses the courage. He doesn’t dare touch her, but he comes up behind her and clears his throat.

She knows immediately, he can see her spine tense, and he wants to run his fingers down it, soothe her, but he lost that right when he became the thing she was afraid of. So when she turns, he simply holds his hand out, fingers splayed, where she can see it. 

“Dance with me?” he says.

She’s going to say no, and he knows it. Who knows how long it’ll be before Archie is back, and swoops her away, maybe forever. 

  
The Jughead of only a few days ago would have begged. Just one last moment. One last moment to prove to her it isn’t over. 

This Jughead feels like yet another permutation of himself, still someone he doesn’t quite recognize. He’s resigned. He’s stopped hoping that it’s not over, and had always been over.

This Jughead, however, persists.

“Please, Betty,” he says softly. “It’s our parents’ wedding. One dance?”

It’s a long wait before she nods hesitatingly, and he doesn’t even dare take her hand to guide her to the dancefloor. In fact, they more closely resemble middle schoolers as he moves his hands to her waist. She shivers anyway, and he feels it go through him too. 

She lays her hands on his shoulders, palms over, so they move a fraction closer. 

Neither speak until she finally asks. “You okay?” 

It is so very Betty Cooper to have been hurt by him and still be worried. 

The problem is, he’s not sure what the answer is. 

“I don’t know.”

She nods, biting down on her lip.

“I’m sorry.” It feels pathetically small after what he did to her, but it unfurrows her brow just a touch, so it’s a start. 

“Thanks.” 

He remembers just over a week ago that they were laughing. They were texting. They were who they were before. The ice had been broken after so long, but now it had frozen over again. 

Jughead wonders when the point comes that it is  _ too _ broken to ever be the same. But if this is the last time he gets, then it’s the last chance to finally be honest. To make her understand.

“I just…that day, I was sad. I guess I’m always sad, but that day was different. Too much, and I drank too much.”

She looks him in the eye, that same Betty Cooper look she gives all their suspects.

“It’s not just the one day, Jug.” 

He nods. “I know. I don’t know when it started. It used to help me with my writing. Help find inspiration, you know? But then it started becoming more, and I don’t...I don’t know why I...I mean, I would never have...not to you. Never.”

“Why to me?” Her voice is barely a whisper. 

He doesn’t answer, can’t answer, but maybe he doesn’t have to. Her hands smooth over his back, and he stares into pure green eyes. Taking a chance, he steps closer. 

“You look beautiful,” he whispers, and a pretty blush colors her cheeks. 

He can’t look away from her eyes. He can’t stop the words from leaving his mouth. 

“I used to think...even after prom, I thought the next time you knocked the breath out of me, you’d be wearing a….different dress.”

They’re treading close to dangerous territory; they both know it. 

“Jug,” she breathes, but now they’re close. Her hands start winding through his hair, giving a slight tug. He just wants to do the right thing. What is the right thing, though, seven years later? 

The alcohol sustained him, and he was sure, so  _ sure _ it wasn’t a problem until he hurt her. 

“I threw out all the booze.” It feels like the least he can offer her, but the words taste like poison in his mouth. It’s a label. It’s a reality. It’s a confirmation that he is what they all feared he would be. 

_ The boy is going to be just like his father _ .

But Betty moves a hand to stroke lightly over his cheek. 

“I’m proud of you,” she says. His heart flips wildly, a feeling he hasn’t experienced in  _ so _ long. 

She’s proud of him. Like she was before everything went wrong. Even like she was before he set off for Iowa, leaving their house. Leaving  _ her _ , sitting on the steps, eyes wide with tears.

_ “I’m proud of you, Jug _ ,” was all she’d said, before tears spilled down her cheeks. He’d felt her eyes on him, even as the car pulled away.

Everything went wrong, so fast. One minute he had Yale and Betty Cooper, and then he had neither.

She shuffles closer, so they’re pressed together, joined hands in between them. He hasn’t been this close to her in seven years. It feels warm all over. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Archie, Wedding Day

He doesn’t want to go to the wedding, but his mother asks. 

“Please, Archie,” she says. “I want to spend time together. I want to be a family.” 

So he goes because she asked. 

But he knows he’ll see her there, and he doesn’t know if he can take that, because she won’t be alone.

He knows her  _ husband  _ is in town, but something in him still struggles to accept it. He knows he has no right to be angry. She owes him nothing, he saw to that. And he’s been trying to respect that, and he’s been holding everything inside himself, so much that he feels like he may burst. 

“That’s because keeping things inside you is against everything you are, man,” Jed says when Archie calls him. He’s just vented about all things Veronica, about their date that wasn’t a date. When he held her hand, and they laughed like it was seven years ago. 

But it wasn’t, as Jed had reminded him. She was married. It was over, and it always had been. He’d kissed Betty. Collectively, he and Betty had struck Veronica down twice, and he deserves nothing from her now. 

It doesn’t make it hurt less, though. It doesn’t make it pleasant to see her and have to stay so far away. 

He talks to Jed, and he doesn’t speak to Veronica. Removing himself helps a bit, but then the wedding. 

It’s hard to explain the feeling when Veronica introduces him to her husband. Not intentionally, of course. Mary had gone to Veronica, hugged her, and she hadn’t been alone. He hadn’t left his mother’s side during the wedding, so now he’s forced in front of Veronica and a dark-haired man with his arm around her. 

It’s hard to know what to focus on. She’s smiling, but her smile isn’t the Veronica smile he knows. It’s a frozen smile, a mask. Or at least, it used to be. He isn’t sure who this Veronica is now. 

He knew Veronica Lodge. Veronica Gekko is someone else entirely. 

He gets introduced as Archibald Andrews, and the man shakes his hand. He’s outwardly friendly, but Chad’s eyes scrutinize Archie carefully, flying from Archie to Veronica and then back to Archie, before gently pulling Veronica away to get to their seats. 

He tries to avoid looking at her during the wedding, but her eyes still track her, still stare at the man with his arm around her. 

_ Not something you get to have an opinion on,  _ his mind tells him. But still, he likes to imagine that the slightly more relaxed posture he sees her adopt halfway through the wedding is because she can feel his eyes on her. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


They get the call the day after the wedding, after they’ve been tasked to clean everything up. 

Alice had tried to tell them it wasn’t necessary, and his mother had waved them off. 

“Nonsense,” she had said. “We’re happy to help.” 

Archie had hoped against hope he would at least be free of Veronica there, but those hopes are dashed when she walks in with pastries and coffee for all. 

It’s not given much of a chance to be awkward before his mother’s phone rings, and then Veronica is finally off his mind. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


His mother is crying, and he hasn’t seen his mother crying since his father died. 

He can’t hear the doctor’s words, but he gets the tone, and he feels his stomach drop straight to his feet. 

It’s malignant. The doctor tells them it’s “bad, but treatable.” The fact that he had to add a caveat is enough for Archie. 

He curls himself into his mother, like a little boy. The tears prick his eyelids, but he will not cry; he cannot cry. His father is dead. He needs to be strong for his mother. He presses his fingers into her as if to physically anchor her here.

_ Cancer _ . His mother has cancer. It had lingered on the periphery for the last few weeks, but now it’s here. It’s real. He holds his mother, warm and breathing against him, the one parent he has left, and he has trouble believing it still. Mary looks like she always has to him. He holds her, but she holds him up. He’s honestly not sure what he would do if that were taken away.

All of these thoughts feel horribly selfish, though. His mother is the one with cancer. She’s the sick one. She’s the one that needs him. And he will be what she needs, he vows it. He’ll be strong for her. He’ll be there. 

* * *

  
  


The mess has long been cleaned up, but he’s still there. He sits underneath a large tree, head against the bark. Mary and Brooke had long since gone home, needing to spend some time together. He’d tried to call Jed, but his phone went straight to voicemail. Just as well, really. He doesn’t even know what he’d say. 

All day long, the tears had tried to break free, but he’d held them back. He’s not the one who should be crying. It’s his job to deal with this. 

He tries Jed again. Voicemail. 

Letting out a deep sigh, he lets his head bang against the tree with only a small wince and nearly jumps out of his skin when he hears a voice. 

“Well,” it says. “That looked like it hurt.”

He thinks he recognizes it, but it can’t be. It isn’t possible, especially given the last few days. He’s entirely convinced he’s dreaming when Veronica Lodge sits down next to him. 

“Veronica,” he breathes out, and she smiles. That smile sets his heart to at least double speed.

“Hi, Archie,” she says. It’s dark, and he can’t see her face well, but she’s smiling at him. And the look in her eyes tell him she knows. 

“You heard.”

She nods. “Your mom called me. And she said you weren’t there. I had a feeling you’d be here, being all broody on your own.”

He swallows the lump in his throat and manages a weak smile. Veronica hesitates before laying a gentle hand on his arm, the most contact they’ve had since the rink. He wants to enjoy it, he so wants to cherish it, but the ring that adorns her finger feels like it’s burning him. 

“Archie,” she says softly. “I’m so sorry.”

_Strong._ _You have to be strong_. _Like your dad was._

He shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

Veronica shifts closer, tugging her pencil skirt down her thighs. 

“Okay,” she says, squeezing his arm. “But you don’t have to be. You know that, right?”

The words remind him of another time, a time where his father was lying on a surgical table, and Veronica’s hands were soothing through his wet hair. 

_ I’m not going anywhere _ , she’d said. 

“It….,” the tears are there again. He swipes angrily underneath his eyes. He’s not sick. He is not the one this is happening to. He has to be strong for his mother. 

“It feels like the family I have is slipping through my fingers.” 

It comes out quite unexpectedly. They don’t seem like they’ve reached that place, but her gaze is still soft. Archie digs his heels into the dirt, exhaling loudly in frustration. 

He splays his fingers wide, and suddenly there are delicately manicured fingers in his, squeezing. 

“Ronnie…”

“Archie,” her voice is low. The rumble is familiar. Comforting, if anything, could possibly soothe the ache inside him.

It’s a moment he treasures, but as with all things he treasures, it ends quickly and abruptly.    
  
A hand comes down on Veronica’s shoulder, and he tenses instantly.

She does, too, until she whirls, and they’re both looking at Chad Gecko.

He smiles a tense, smug grin. 

“Ron, dear, I think it’s time we let Archie have some time, don’t you?”

“Actually, Chad, we were kind of talking.” He doesn’t expect the man to give in, and he doesn’t. 

Instead, Chad steps closer, close as to be blocking his view of Veronica, and tugs her a little closer to him. 

“Don’t worry, Archie. We’ll get out of your hair.” 

It’s said ostensibly as an offer, but it’s not, and all of them know it. 

And Archie fights. It’s what he does. At El Royale, in the Army, all his life, Archie has fought. Now, he’s ready to fight, but then there’s a hand squeezing his arm, and he feels Veronica’s warmth leave him. 

“It’s okay,” she says softly. “I was just leaving. Bye, Archie.” 

She takes her husband’s hand, the hand that was holding his only moments ago, and pulls him away.

Archie watches them walk away, and again, his head falls against the bark, but this time, he doesn’t even notice the pain it causes. 

* * *

Veronica

Tabitha’s dark hair tumbles down her shoulders in beautiful curls.

Veronica has told her that she is jealous of Tabitha’s natural curls on more than one occasion, and the girl has only laughed. 

“Girl, to have that shine,” she says, tugging a lock of Veronica’s straight hair. 

Blowouts and manicures had become somewhat of a regular occurrence for the two girls. Tabitha’s presence is easy and energizing. Veronica finds herself nearly unaccustomed to the benefits of having a friend, which feels ridiculous. 

She had friends in New York. There were no shortage of contacts on her phone, and she had company. 

But, she’s getting to realize, a lot of her company comes in the form of her husband. Tabitha likes Chad, she playfully invites him to girls’ nights, and she knows her presence amuses him. 

Today, they sit and sip coffee. Hers tastes a bit more bitter than usual, and it makes her stomach turn. Tabitha seems unaffected, so she swallows it down. Blowing out a deep breath, she forces herself to relax and listens to Tabitha complain about some of the Pops customers and how her quota for emotional confrontations on her property was rapidly reaching maxed-out status. 

It forces a giggle out of her, especially when Tabitha shoves her playfully and comments, “You and your lot are the worst offenders!” 

They lounge on the porch until her phone rings once, then twice. Tabitha gives her a look, and Veronica meets her eyes guiltily. 

Tabitha pushes herself up and grabs her bag, making a crack about how she had to get to Pops and wipe the tearstains off the tables anyway as Veronica answers the call. 

Veronica loves her businesses. There, nobody questions her. Nobody associates her with her family. She is good at what she does, and people know it. 

In business, she has proved herself. In business, she is her own. 

In her most honest moments, Veronica forces herself to admit to herself and herself only that she is not her own in her marriage. 

However, is that not how it’s supposed to be?

Even now in Riverdale, Chad asks her if she’s completed her workout. If she’s sent her contracts off if she’s taken her vitamins. 

It’s how he shows he cares, she knows. And he  _ does _ care. He’s warm and safe and secure, and she loves him. 

But he chafes here in Riverdale, even while spending most of the day on the phone with his clients. And she understands, she does, Riverdale still feels stifling even after all these years. But there’s something else here, something she struggles to define. Maybe something that feels unfinished. 

She completes the call quickly, solving the crisis, and planning a meeting for the following hour. Her employee sounds markedly calmer as they end the call. 

All in a day’s work, she supposes, in something she’d grown up doing. 

She is the Lodge heir, even when she’s not technically a Lodge anymore. She’s known this since she was five years old, and she sat on her Daddy’s knee in his office. 

“One day, all of this is yours,  _ mija _ ,” he had said. 

That was her life, destined from the beginning. Take over the family business, and maybe open a few of her own. Marry someone like her father, have children.

And business, Veronica could handle. She was good at business. But family? Children? It had never seemed to come easily despite her best efforts. 

_ Apple of my eye,  _ she remembers being called by her father.  _ You come to me first _ , from her mother. 

Hiram and Hermoine Lodge functioned as a single unit in so many ways in everything except love. Business, always business. 

She certainly remembers her parents fighting. When she was thirteen, the thought had first occurred to her that they seemed much more like business partners than husband and wife. 

She had been grateful that things were different with her and Chad. He had pursued her after meeting at a formal dinner. He had swept her off her feet, bought her gifts, been attentive every day. 

Surely, they fought less often than Hiram and Hermoine. But the kids fight - that remained an issue. Chad had made no secret about the fact that he was ready for kids, and it was more than just an implication from both him and her parents that she should be in accord. 

Which was very easy for them to say. It didn’t affect their body. They didn’t have to carry, birth, or care for the child. As caring as Chad was to her when he had first brought up having a baby, she’d spent hours trying to picture him as a father. And maybe it was just not a capacity she had seen Chad in yet, but she can’t.

She used to, sometimes, picture herself as a mother. In a warm house filled with love and laughter. Nothing stately and fancy, but a place filled with the love that her home never was growing up.

It feels, looking back, like a ridiculous fantasy, coming from someone she had left behind. 

Another call from work comes in, and Veronica is grateful. Her forehead is starting to feel a bit warm. 

On the line, her stomach begins to churn, and then when she hangs up, she feels it give a heave.

The bile rises into her throat, and Veronica barely makes it to the bathroom before the vomit forces its way out of her mouth. 

That’s a new trend, in the last few days, and not a pleasant one. Veronica attributes it to stress but feels a tiny voice at the back of her mind wondering if it could be more. However, the thoughts of what it  _ could _ be make her heart pound, and the bile start to rise again, so she bites it down. 

It couldn’t be, anyway. Not now, and not here. 

* * *

Cheryl

Thornhill still feels the same. It’s still hers, and Nana Rose had left it to her, so it would nonetheless constitute some version of home.

But it feels nothing like what Cheryl imagines home must be. From the stately iron gates to the sweeping grounds, Thornhill feels like being wrapped in a nightmare. It had only ever felt like home once, and that was when Nana was alive.

And when Toni was here. 

But, Cheryl reminds herself, giving her head a shake, that was then, and there are far more fabulous things now.

Her four-poster bed now feels like it’s mocking her, and she is yet again reminded of why she never comes home. 

_ My four-poster bed is your four-poster bed.  _

Cheryl wonders if a room that was once  _ ours _ can ever be  _ mine  _ again. 

Either way, she can’t stay here. 

Grabbing her sunglasses, Cheryl races down the stairs and pushes open the door. Her old chair where she used to sit beside her Nana still sits in the same place outside. 

Cheryl’s eyes fill with tears as she reaches the seat, running her fingers along the plush fabric. 

The place chokes with sorrow now. Cheryl sits gently and pulls out her phone. The flights page is bookmarked, and she browses. It doesn’t matter where. She just needs to leave. A designer in Milan had wanted her to stop in anyway. 

Just somewhere that was not choking her with memories. 

The voice comes from behind her, reaching her like an apparition, making her jump.

“Hi.” She knows the voice instantly. She wishes she didn’t. 

Cheryl swallows down the emotion, forces her voice into neutrality. “Antoinette Topaz. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Toni’s feet pad softly on the pavement as she lowers herself onto the stone bench across from Cheryl. 

Her belly is impossible to look away from. Cheryl knows she’s staring, but she can’t help it. It’s still hard to wrap her mind around it, even after having spent the past few days thinking of nothing but this. 

“I just wanted to see if you wanted to talk. You looked pretty upset the other day.”

Cheryl forces a scoff out. “Though I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, I assure you I am and always have been in full possession of my faculties.” 

Toni sighs and reaches out, laying a hand over Cheryl’s, and she can’t control how her mind jerks violently back. 

_ You’re not deviant. You’re sensational.  _

“Cheryl, I’m sorry about your Nana.”

Chery sniffs but will not cry. “No need to be sorry. Nana Rose had lived her years.”

Toni frowns. “That still doesn’t make it okay, Cheryl. You’re allowed to grieve someone you loved.” 

_Loved._ _A strange word, coming from someone who had never left Cheryl’s heart the way she found it._

“Am I?” The barbs are coming back, replacing the emotion. Like she was raised to react. Cheryl is nothing but grateful. It’s so easy to feel over the pain. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”   
  


“Well, you didn’t exactly stick around to find out, now, did you?”   
  


She sees the hurt in Toni’s eyes, and it’s a relief in some way. Toni fiddles with her thumbs a moment before meeting Cheryl’s eyes again. 

“You would have done it anyway, Cheryl. It was inevitable back then.”

“Really?” Cheryl snipes sarcastically. “Please, do forgive me in the unlikely event that I am wrong,  _ Antoinette _ , but I seem to remember that you were the one that foolishly broke up with me.” 

Toni sighs. “We were headed in different directions. It was the right thing to do.”

“False.  _ You  _ decided we were going in different directions.  _ I  _ begged you to stay.”

“I wasn’t - “

“I  _ begged _ you, Toni!” She had. She vividly remembers being on her knees, begging Toni not to leave her, not to say it, but she had anyway. And every day since then,  _ it’s over _ has been on a loop, never far from her mind. 

“You were the first person I’ve ever been in love with in my entire life, and I  _ begged  _ you. But it didn’t even matter to you, did it? You had decided we weren’t going to end up together, and now -” Cheryl waves a hand to indicate Toni’s bump. “Now it’s too late.” 

She  _ wants _ Toni to be hurt. She wants to see the same look on Toni’s face that she had worn for so long after their breakup. She wants to know that it hurt Toni as much as it hurt her. That she had the same scars on her very soul that Cheryl had. 

She doesn’t want to be crying. It’s useless. It’s mortal. 

But there are, suddenly, tears, and then there is a hand on hers. Long fingers, manicured in black, squeeze hers, and it’s too much of the past, all at once. 

They can’t go back there, she knows. Even if she didn’t, the rounded belly is as stark an indication as any. 

Before, she had let Toni’s hand lie on top of hers until they absolutely had to separate. Today, she jerks her hand free, wipes the tears as subtly as she possibly can, and forces her voice into a frosty steadiness.

“You shouldn’t have come here. I trust you know how to find your way out?”

She spins on her high heel and flounces toward the door. Perhaps she imagines it, but what she hears from behind her nearly stops her in her tracks. 

  
“I’m sorry, Cheryl. I missed you.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Jughead, Wedding Day

His arms feels empty, which is only fitting because that’s how the rest of him feels. 

As the song had ended, the applause had forced reality back onto Betty and Jughead. A different look overtook Betty’s face.

Jughead had only dimly been aware of the song, but he remembers very well how the words he knew he needed to say choked him. 

“I’m happy for you, Betty.”

In a way, he is. If she’s happy, he’s happy. That’s all he’s ever wanted for her. But it tears into his gut to know he’ll never be the reason for that again. That he’ll have to see them together and be silent. 

Her look is hard to scrutinize. She passes a hand over his head and tucks a curl away.

“Jug,” she says, and then the sound of deafening applause rings out. 

Instantly, there is cold as she steps away from him. The moment is broken, he knows because he knows keenly what broken feels like. 

She steps out of his arms, and she is gone before he knows it. 

With a squeeze of his arm, Betty was gone, and thus the emptiness that he felt. 

For long moments, he had stood there, like an idiot, in the middle of the dance floor, trying to process what had just happened. One minute, he and Betty were as close as they had been in years, and he was throwing his alcohol out. 

The next, he’s alone on the dance floor, and the world continues to spin around him. 

As subtly as he can, Jughead slinks from the room and heads to the bathroom. 

It’s just there for insurance. To assure himself that he won’t start shaking like a leaf in a storm at his father’s wedding. He hadn’t ever figured on needing to drink it, and he had meant to pour it down the sink after the wedding. He had thrown the alcohol out, but this...this was so small it barely counted. 

And in his mind is  _ I’m happy for you and Archie _ , and the smile he’d seen Betty give Archie, and the looks that he was dimly aware Jessica was giving him as she danced with someone Jughead didn’t recognize.

He just needed it to easier, just for one moment. He didn’t need much, he just needed some relief, and then he could function. Then Betty’s face would disappear.

* * *

  
  


The alcohol makes him not particularly perceptive as he returns to the dance floor. The bride and groom have since disappeared, along with many, but many of his peers are still dancing. Betty’s there, talking to someone in the corner. And so is Jessica. She makes her way near him, and perceptive or not, and it does not take a genius to read her tight, angry expression.

He mentally scans through what he may have said to her. He tries to grab her hand, to lead her to a corner, but she yanks it away, glowering at him. 

He has a feeling it’s more for appearances than anything else due to their current position, but eventually, she slings her hands over his shoulders and pulls him into a dance. Jessica is still practically vibrating with anger, and he desperately trying to find the energy to ask her why. 

He knows what that question sparks, and he is so  _ tired _ . 

But it doesn’t look like she will tell him on her own, so he finally bites the bullet. 

“Something wrong, Jess?”

She gives an incredulous scoff. “What’s the matter, Jug? Really?”

He sighs, hanging his head low. “Jess, it’s been a really long day. I’m exhausted.” 

“I can see that,” she bites off sarcastically. “But in case you forgot, you’re my date to this wedding.” 

“Yes? I don’t see the problem, Jess. You look like you had fun.”

“I did, but you weren’t part of that fun, were you?” 

For one brief moment, he wonders if she’s talking about his disappearance to the bathroom. Surely, she smelled the alcohol. But their conversation before their fight filters into his head, her telling him that he thought better drunk. Distantly, he tries to recall Jessica at the wedding. She had danced with him and with some people. 

He tries hard not to think about the fact that it was hard to remember anything other than Betty in the dress and feeling the heat of her body leave his when the song ended. 

However, Jessica is looking at him with an expectant look in her eyes, as if he should know. He’s vaguely aware that he hasn’t been a great boyfriend to her recently, to be fair. But based on her expression, he doubts that’s the mistake she’s referring to. 

After staring blankly at her, she finally bursts. 

“Reggie!”

“Reggie?” he repeats stupidly. He’d been aware that Reggie was there, but the relevance is lost on him.

“Yes, Reggie! You didn’t see us dancing?” 

He did, maybe? He’s honestly not sure, and that probably says it all. 

Her face takes on a shine as if she’s proud. “He and I danced. He asked me if I was single, and I swear to god, Jughead, I didn’t know what to say. We were literally right beside you, and you didn’t even see me. You didn’t see me because you never do.” 

His mind is moving very slowly, along with their movements. He struggles to grasp it, to understand that there was a whole other perspective he had never thought to consider. 

“You were trying to make me jealous?”

She shrugs. “Does it matter? It didn’t even come close to working. I don’t know why I thought it had a chance.”

He doesn’t see her, she says. Is she wrong? She has been on his mind very little, for someone close to him. He should feel bad, he  _ does _ feel bad, but he is working on minimal emotional strength. This just feels like it’s pushing him over the edge. 

“What do you want from me, Jess?” 

  
She stares at him, eyes wide. “I want you to  _ care _ . I want you to want me, and I want you to think about me!” 

“I do!” 

Their voices have risen. A bit louder, and the music won’t cover it. People are starting to look, but she refuses to be pulled away. 

“No, you don’t! You say you’re committed. You say you love me, but you don’t talk to me, you don’t look at me, you don’t want me! I thought if I danced with someone else, maybe you’d finally realize you don’t want to lose me.”

She swipes at the tears under her eyes. There is definite staring now. Jughead can feel eyes on him, even as the next song starts. 

Jessica gives a watery, wry laugh and looks around the room, eyes settling in the corner before flicking back to him. “But  _ clearly, _ I was talking to the wrong person. No, if I actually wanted to make you jealous, I would have danced with Archie.”

She lays a hand on her head, passing through her hair, sarcasm dripping from her tone. 

“Oh no wait - “

“Keep your voice down,” he pleads, but this is a battle he’s lost already. 

“No,” she hisses. “No, that won’t work either, because  _ I’m not Betty Cooper. _ ” 

It’s the equivalent of dropping a match on a trail of gasoline. The room is silent, and he can feel the stares prickling his neck. One pair of eyes, he doesn’t even need to turn around to see. He can feel the green gaze on him. It stupefies him. He can’t say anything. Not words of assurance, not words of comfort, nothing, as Jessica turns and runs from the dancefloor. 

* * *

  
  
  


She’s not at home when he gets there. He’s not surprised. Perhaps it’s for the best. His head pounds, and no distractions seem to work. 

He pores over the suspect list, but his brain struggles to keep up at all. 

Veronica: Any of Hiram’s associates, Malloy family, business competitor.

Archie: Dodger and family, townspeople from Athens, an employee of Leopold and Loeb.

Jughead: Penny, Ghoulies, G&G players, Stonies.

Betty: Black Hood copycats, G&G players, Stonies. 

It’s a pretty pathetic list, given the latest decade. He can barely remember the vast majority of their enemies. He’s just giving in to the general feeling of incompetence that settles over him when his phone rings and Jellybean’s name lights up the caller ID. 

Jughead doesn’t know how much he has left in him, but he can’t ignore his sister. 

“Jellybean,” he sighs. “Now’s not really a good time.”

“Jug,” his sister sobs over the phone. She  _ sobs. _ He can’t remember Jellybean crying since she was fourteen and Charles was taken away in handcuffs. 

“Jelly,” he says slowly, fingers digging into his phone. “Jelly, what’s wrong.”

“Jug, it’s Mel,” she says, and then her voice comes out on a series of unintelligible shrieks and gasps, and he can’t make out a thing.

“JB, listen to me,” he says. “Hear my voice. Listen to what I’m saying. I need you to breathe. In, out, in, out. Breathe.”

He would not say she calms, but her breaths get a fraction slower, so he takes that as a win. “Jelly, what’s wrong?”

“It’s the police, Jug. They called me.” Jughead’s heart pounds fast at all the possibilities that statement implied. Was it their father? Was he okay? Alice? Even...Betty? He doesn’t know why they wouldn’t have called him, but maybe,  _ maybe _ . 

“Is it -” 

“It’s Mel, Jug. They said...the coroner said it was an accident.”

“Coroner?”

There was a pause. “There was an accident, Jug, and Mel’s dead.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, Riverdale thoughts. You can find most of these on Tumblr at thatiranianphantom dot tumblr dot com, but I'll summarize them in brief for you. 
> 
> First of all, let's acknowledge that Riverdale's winning formula is Bugvarchie. If that wasn't clear to the writers (and after S2, it should have been), rest assured it has been made abundantly clear to them after the end of last season. They were hitting series-low ratings after only two episodes of Barchie. They cannot start the season like that, thus the massive amount of Bughead content being put out. They are literally screaming out for people to come back. 
> 
> We can generally expect the first 3 episodes to be Prom and Graduation. I really feel like Bughead will break up offscreen even after she tells him, during the time jump. Episode 4 should be all setup post time jump, and they won't actually reunite till 5x05. 
> 
> To be honest, I anticipate Barchie between 5x05 and the midseason finale. But because of the viewers lost, it will be brief. And there will likely be a ton of pining (my fave). Rest assured, Bugvarchie WILL be back, and because of how fast Riverdale rips through plots, I see that happening before or during the midseason finale. 
> 
> Hang on, folks. It'll be a rough ride but it will be fine.


	8. i was almost home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t slip out for water because he sources the heat warming him, and it’s a body. It’s a sleeping, breathing body pressed against him. It’s Betty Cooper, and she’s lying in his arms, on the floor, hair tickling his chin. 
> 
> And then he can’t breathe for a whole different reason.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Grammarly (this is what counts as my beta) tells me that I have a whole lot of monotonous sentences but like...you'd tell me, right? Also, it tells me many times that "the average person may not know this word" but I defended your honor, dear reader, worry not. 
> 
> Things finally start to happen here! Spoilers....Beronica. Bughead. Choni.

_I went out driving trying to clear my head_   
_I tried to sweep out all the ruins that my emotions left_   
_(I guess I'm)_   
_I guess I'm feeling just a little tired of this_   
_And all the baggage that seems to still exist_

* * *

**Betty**

  
  


The blackness of grief takes over the whole household. JB doesn’t allow anyone to touch her for an entire day. She hides in her room, and the door is not unlocked until a day after she gets the call. They sit by the doorway. She never responds, but they talk to her. 

And then, on the second day, she opens the door, face pale but dry. She lets FP take her to the coroner’s office, chin firmly raised, eyes shining but no tears. 

She calls Mel’s family, and still, she doesn’t cry.

  
She looks out the window all day. She doesn’t eat. She picks a dress for the viewing. And still, no tears.

The grief in her face is raw, but she is mute, moving through the days without a sound. 

Sometimes Betty wonders if she ever properly processed the grief from the immense amount of losses that marked her high school years or if she pushed it down and focused simply on surviving. There was never enough time to grieve. There was always another monster, another mystery. 

And at a certain point, perhaps she had accepted it as life. 

_ Of course, my brother is a serial killer.  _

So this, this raw grief, even this tearless grief, it stops her. To be that tightly bonded with someone that you feel that adrift when they are ripped away from you...she hadn’t felt that in years. 

It makes her stomach drop. It makes her feel lost. It makes her feel cold. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  


There are many times when Betty wonders if she should go back to the hotel. She and Jellybean have never really spoken in the last few years, and this feels so intensely personal. Like something she should not be a part of. 

Her mother feels it too. Alice conceals it well, but Betty can feel the awkwardness radiating from her mother. How necessary are they here, she wonders. 

Her mother mentions something at breakfast on the second day. That they could give the Joneses some time. 

Jellybean’s head snaps up, and she barks a no. She offers nothing else, but they don’t deny her anything. 

They’re staying. 

It takes her back to senior year and a house that finally felt like home. To looking away as her mother and FP kissed in the kitchen. To movie nights that they’d kick Jughead out for, and she and Jellybean would fall asleep in the living room. To a bed and a room that was  _ theirs _ . 

Seven years ago, and a lifetime at the same time, since they’ve been  _ this _ . Since it’s felt like this, like a family. 

Now, her mother and FP still kiss, still hold each other with tenderness, but everyone else feels a million miles away from each other. 

They hold the viewing on the third day, and JB’s composure slips but once. One definite tear, and then it’s wiped away. Betty reaches over and grabs her hand anyway. JB’s fingers close around hers, and don’t let go until they leave.

When they get home, she flies up to her room and speaks to nobody.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


It’s not prompted until they finally reach Gladys. Alice had been insistent they contact her. Gladys had been...inconsistent in Jellybean’s life for the last decade, but Alice had informed them that she needed a mother in no uncertain terms.

There are various reasons (excuses), but Gladys isn’t coming. Not now, and likely not ever. 

Alice touches her fingertips to her forehead briefly. “Ridiculous,” she murmurs. “What kind of mother….”

Betty says nothing, not even that Alice herself has not set the finest example in her younger days. She barely has time because Alice’s face hardens, and she makes her way up the stairs, this time with purpose. 

FP stares after her for a moment, then trips over his feet to follow her, trying in vain to grab her hand and pull her away from Jellybean’s door. 

But Betty remembers Jughead once telling her that it was futile to stop her when her mom was on a mission. 

The door is closed, but Alice doesn’t seem to care. 

Jellybean looks up from her position curled up on the bed as she hears Alice come in, and a glare mars her expression. 

“Go away,” she snarls. 

It’s as if Alice doesn’t hear her as she sits on the bed beside the girl, close but not too close. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. 

Jellybean yanks her arms in and sits up, wrenching herself far away. Her cheeks are red, her face pale, and Betty braces herself for an explosion.

“Get  _ out _ ,” she rasps. “I don’t want you here.”

Alice nods. “I know you don’t. But I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry, just get out!”

There’s a note of desperation in JB’s voice now and perhaps a shine of tears in her eyes. Betty reaches out to her mother, tries to pull her back, but Alice shakes her off and slides closer to Jellybean. 

Alice tips JB’s chin up, looking her in the eyes. “I’m sorry that Mel died,” she says, with characteristic bluntness.

Jughead, FP, and Betty suck in a breath, but Jellybean simply jerks away with a  _ hmmph _ sound. Alice moves closer again, bends to look her in the eyes.

“I’m sorry that someone you love died.”

Jughead thinks he almost catches the sting of tears in his little sister’s cheeks now. He starts forward, but a hand, Betty’s hand, on his arm stops him. 

JB’s shoulders slump, rounding, and losing the hardness of the last few days. 

Alice slides, so they’re sitting nearly knee to knee. “I’m sorry that Mel died,” she says one more time, and that, it seems, is what it takes because JB breaks. Tears rip from her body in waves, and to his great shock, she throws herself forward into Alice’s arms. Arms wrap around her, mussing through her hair, and Jellybean heaves great, wailing sobs.

The girl stutters out a few broken phrases, and Alice holds her tighter. 

Jughead slips a hand onto Jellybean’s back, FP strokes through her hair. Betty laces her fingers into Jellybean’s, into the hand that isn’t clutching at her mother. 

Jellybean is not her; she knows. But she makes sure to hold the girl’s fingers tightly, lest they make for the flesh of her palms. 

And there they stay. Jellybean wails, Alice cradles her, and FP puts his arms around them both. They are a mess of limbs entwined, bonded by the grief that hangs over all of them. 

And Betty feels the broken things start to knit themselves back together again. She feels herself begin to remember the intense contrasts that made up Riverdale. The beauty and the pain. The kindness and the cruelty. 

* * *

  
  
  


**Jughead**

The hours bleed into one another, but when it’s done, FP and Alice lay on the bed, Jellybean in between them, pressed to them like a small child. With a final squeeze of her hand, Betty and Jughead slip onto the floor. He can’t even see straight; the grief that permeates the room, that permeates the whole house feels stifling. 

It’s a blur, and he scarcely realizes that he hasn’t had anything to drink in nearly a full day. 

It’s so late, and he’s so tired, and the room is so heavy that he simply slips to the floor with Betty and remembers nothing else. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


It’s the dry throat that wakes him, at first.

And after that, it’s the warmth. It’s hard to source because he never wakes up warm. Shaking, sure. Cold, definitely. But never warm. Now, though, he’s warm, with a distinct tingling sensation in his arm. 

Rubbing his eyes, he blearily inspects his surroundings. The room is dark, but the first sign of the sun pokes in the window. He can hear deep breathing from above him and the hard floor underneath him. His throat screams out for water, but as soon as he goes to move, he stops, and his whole body goes still. 

He doesn’t slip out for water because he sources the heat warming him, and it’s a body. It’s a sleeping, breathing body pressed against him. It’s Betty Cooper, and she’s lying in his arms, on the floor, hair tickling his chin. 

And then he can’t breathe for a whole different reason.

He doesn’t know what to do. Should he wake her and ruin this moment? Could he savor it? 

Should he? 

In the end, the decision is taken out of his hands when she stirs, and green eyes flicker open. He should move, he decides, but he can’t. He’s mesmerized, spellbound, and when her sleepy face flickers into a smile, he finds himself suddenly smiling back. 

“Hi,” she rasps. 

“Hey,” he breathes, allowing his thumb to travel up and down her back. 

There’s silence as they look at each other, a conversation without words as the world is silent around them. Betty’s eyes grow clearer, and she takes in their surroundings, their position. He knows what she’s thinking as she turns back to him. 

“Jug, about the wedding…” 

He shakes his head. “Please, can we not talk about that?” The topic feels dangerous, too charged to speak about in this place of safety. 

“But...what she said…” 

But fortunately, this is as far as she gets, because as soon as Jellybean wakes up, she lets out a wail, and they all rush to her side. Betty rises, and they make one more single second of eye contact. For one second, blue meets green, and Jughead feels the breath sucked from him. 

_ It shouldn’t be over until the feelings stop, and they haven’t stopped for me.  _

She looks beautiful like this, rumpled and sleepy, eyes wide and looking at him. There was a time he thought he’d look at her like this forever. He wonders when the last time he thought that was. 

* * *

  
  
  


When reality slams back into him, it hits with the force of a mack truck. 

Jellybean. The murders. Jessica. 

In the last two days, the house had felt cut off from the rest of the world, as if it were just them. 

The Cooper/Jones/Smith not-quite-family. 

But the world around them still exists, and it comes back for them, with a letter and a phone call. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Jessica’s angry. He can tell that from her tight tone when she calls, and the way she tells him there’s a letter for him here, and how he can “get here whenever.” 

He knows what this means. The very last thing he wants to do is drag himself back to the hotel room, and “home” is such an odd, ill-fitting term for it, but he must go back. 

  
  


For Jellybean, it’s the opposite. Jellybean can’t stay. That’s what she says, and FP is hard-pressed to argue with her. His new job starts in a few months, but when he gently suggests she help him look for a place to stay, Jellybean nearly bursts into tears again. The college is notified that she’ll be back in a few weeks and plans quickly fall into place.

There’s little discussion, but he catches Alice’s face fall, just briefly. He imagines this is hardly how she wanted to start her marriage, with a tragedy and someone else leaving. This town has taken so much from everyone. 

This time, though, he reminds himself, at least she’s not alone. This time, she walks to her husband’s side, and FP turns. “Alice,” he says.

She smiles and slides her hand into his. “I’ve been told I have a good eye for real estate.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The house is suddenly both full and empty—full of boxes, empty of people. Alice drops a kiss on Betty’s head and tells her she’ll be back soon to pack up and deal with the sale’s finer details. 

Betty’s eyes shine, but she simply nods. She stays at the house, and with one final glance, he heads back to the hotel, knowing what awaits him. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


In the end, it’s fast. 

Jessica knows it’s over before he ever says it. In fact, he barely has to say it. He unlocks the door, and she’s sitting on the couch with a bag near her feet. The room is silent. He doesn’t even dare sit too close to her as he moves to the other end of the couch. She doesn’t look at him, and he is forced to break the silence finally. 

“Jess, this is…” 

“It’s not working.” It’s more of a statement.

He nods. Those images of her, those bright, shining images of her smile and her laugh and her hair, he can’t find them anymore. And he can’t remember a time they weren’t a coping mechanism. So yes, it’s not working. 

But apparently, she’s not done. 

“It’s not working because you’re still in love with Betty.” 

She doesn’t look at him, but he feels as if he’s being watched anyway. He feels like he’s two people. One jumps at the statement, feels the urge to fight it. To proclaim that it’s been seven years, and he’s moved on from his high school girlfriend. 

But then there’s the other part of him, the part of him that had been drunkenly ready to beg her to take him back. The part that had always felt the hole inside of him. The part of him that feels the most pain, but that also feels the most real. 

And that part of him is unquestionably, undeniably, forever in love with Betty Cooper. 

It’s been seven years, and he hasn’t stopped. He doesn’t know how to stop. He doesn’t think he ever will. 

So he doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t correct her.

He can tell by her scoff that it’s confirmation enough. 

  
  
  
  


He remembers saying the process of ending the Stonewall mess was a process of dotting I’s and crossing T’s. It was foolish, even back then, but the breakup feels much the same. Jessica packs her belongings with tears streaming down her cheeks. 

He feels badly. He wants to say something, anything, but he doesn’t know anything he could say that would be a comfort. 

She barely talks to him, and he’d be hard-pressed to blame her. When all her belongings are in her suitcase, she straightens and finally looks him in the eyes, her own eyes blurred with tears. 

“Was this even real at all, Jughead?”

“I...I think so.” He does. There was a time where this relationship felt right, felt  _ okay _ —a time where he could feel comfortable with her. 

“Was it? Because it always felt like...in the back of my mind, it felt like you were holding yourself back. And I got to thinking that was just how you were, or that it was my imagination but….Betty Cooper always existed in our relationship, didn’t she? Your heart never left her, and it never will.”

“Yes.” The least he owes her now is honesty. Even when Betty wasn’t there, she was there. She’d been there since he was ten, and his heart knew no other way. 

She slings her bag over his shoulder and refuses his offer to help her to the cab. He doesn’t know what to do. It feels like he should hug her or maybe kiss her? He wants to do neither, but to offer some comfort feels like a knee-jerk reaction. He settles for apologizing again. 

She gives a short nod and then turns towards the door. 

Maybe he should stop her, but Jughead feels so  _ tired _ . This relationship has exhausted him, and she deserves better than anything he can give her now. 

So he tells her he’s sorry and nothing else.

Her expression barely changes, but she moves toward the door while he collapses on the couch.

“It’s never going to work, Jug.” She’s halfway out the door when she says it. 

At first, he thinks he’s heard her wrong.

“What?”

She turns, and her eyes are glistening but hard.

“You and Betty. It’s never going to work the way you want.”

“Jess…”

She shakes her head and picks at the doorknob with a fingernail.

“You two think you can go get coffee, recreate the first date, try to make it what it was before? It’s too late, Jughead. You’re in love with Betty Cooper, but you don’t even know who Betty Cooper is anymore. So when you look back on this, remember what this could have been when you and Betty don’t work out again; I want you to remember that.”

And then, with a swish of the door, she’s gone. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


He does it when he’s finally alone.

He almost doesn’t do it. Not for the first time, he nearly talks himself out of it. Convinces himself that he’s overreacting, that he has it under control, that it’s not that bad. Those voices in his head are convincing, and he very nearly believes them. 

But then, he thinks of a tiny flask and sneaking into the bathroom. He thinks of  _ you think better when you drink _ . And, of course, he thinks of  _ let go of me _ , and that high, terrified voice that he had put there. 

Then, his fingers move over the keys and type those words, the hardest words he’s ever typed. The words that glare back at him from his laptop screen. 

_ Alcoholics Anonymous meetings near me _ . 

He forces his fingers along the keyboard. His head throbs and his throat burns as he finds a meeting at a community center a town over. It’s tomorrow night. And he could attend. He  _ should  _ attend. 

But what would that mean? 

That word defined his father for so many years. And now, it would define him. It would be a mark, a scarlet letter. It would take over everything. 

And Betty...she deserved better than that. She deserved the best. 

He leaves the page open and slams the laptop shut. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


**Cheryl**

Her cousin is busy. Cheryl knew she would be, but still, Thornhill remains in a gray, stately air of  _ loneliness _ .

And she  _ could _ leave, so Cheryl doesn’t understand why she’s still here. This town has brought her nothing but pain, nothing but abuse, death, and more death. She visits Nana’s grave, lays flowers lovingly at the resting place of an imperfect woman who was often her only source of love. 

She feels  _ grief. _ She feels it holding her in, feels herself slipping into an Ophelia-like stupor. 

So she walks. She walks around Thornhill’s grounds and then around Riverdale. She drives, and she walks to Pops, to the old school, even to the Southside. She feels Riverdale’s very essence entrap her, a siren song not even Milan could assuage. 

Her days also fill with thoughts of Toni, much as she doesn’t want them to. They fill with thoughts of a tall man, or maybe a woman, cradling Toni’s belly, holding her hand in the delivery room, hoisting a tiny child upon their shoulders as they all walk home. It fills her with an ache so unbefitting of a Blossom. 

She wasn’t raised to be  _ jealous _ . She was raised to be rich, fabulous, and successful. And she had become that, without any help. So she didn’t need Toni.

(But does she  _ want _ her, a traitorous voice inside of her whispers.)

It sticks with her. It sticks with her through the days, through walks and drives, as she aims her red convertible at the Southside. She doesn’t know where to find Toni, not anymore. But her head is terribly full of the most absurd ideas. Sometimes her mind tries to insert her own image into that happy family scene. It wasn’t as if she had never thought of such things for her and Toni. But three years ago, such thoughts had come to a careening halt and become too painful to think about. 

With a sigh, Cheryl puts the car in park outside Sunnyside Trailer Park. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, but her eyes fall on the trailer on the far left. She remembers this trailer. She remembers being guided into it, shaking and trying to rip off the starchy blue dress and red cardigan; she remembers gentle hands brushing her hair and giving her soft clothes and holding her tightly as stone-faced nuns haunted her dreams. A tiny trailer, not befitting of a Blossom, but it felt more like home than the stately mansion with her mother ever did. 

“Cheryl?” The voice makes her spine go straight.

The door clicks open, and Toni Topaz lowers herself into the passenger seat. There’s a long pause, and then Toni speaks.

“I figured you’d come to talk eventually.” 

Cheryl manages to force a scoff out. “Don’t flatter yourself.” 

Toni’s mouth quirks. “I don’t think I am. I think you want to talk after all.”

“Simply bored, that’s all.”

“Bored enough to drive to the trailer park? That doesn’t sound like the Cheryl Blossom I know.” 

Stiffening, Cheryl slid her sunglasses onto her face. “It seems redundant to point out, but you really don’t know me anymore, Antoinette.” 

Toni nods, running a fingertip along the leather interior. “Fair enough.”

After a pause, she turns toward Cheryl. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. Better than fine. Fabulous, I’d say. You, well….”

She searches her brain for an insult. The sad fact was, Toni didn’t look bad. In fact, her stomach pangs with just good she looks, protruding belly and all. “You look thin.” 

She expects it to slide off Toni’s shoulders, but the girl’s brow furrows, and her gaze falls. 

“Well, Serpent life doesn’t exactly make you rich, Cheryl. We do the best we can.”

The statement deserves some introspection, Cheryl thinks. On closer inspection, Toni’s nails are dirty. Her face is pale, and her limbs, but for her belly, are thin. 

Cheryl’s stomach sinks as she takes in her former love. “Do you mean to tell me that those animals see a pregnant woman and don’t even feed her properly?” 

“We take care of our own,” there’s a note of anger in Toni’s voice. “There just hasn’t been a lot coming in lately.” 

Cheryl’s eyes flick around the luxury of the car and take in how Toni’s fingers reach toward the heater. 

“And you spend your days at the library because?”

“I tutor there, Cheryl. And it’s clean. And warm. I don’t need you feeling sorry for me. There’s nothing to feel sorry for. This has been the norm for years before you even.” 

Something burns inside Cheryl, which wants to reach out and wrap Toni up and take her away. But there is something, quite literally, in between them. 

“And the baby? Is it…” There’s a lump inside her throat, a lump that steals the confidence from her voice. “Is it yours?” 

Toni’s eyes cast down, one finger tracing briefly over her bump. 

“Not in any way that matters.”

“So it’s not yours?”   
  


Toni sighs and puts her hand by her side. “I say I’m a surrogate, and I guess in a way I am, but...technically, I guess it’s mine. It doesn’t  _ feel _ like mine, though. The parents, they’re already bonded. And the money is good. Genetically, the baby might be mine, and maybe I’ll feel differently after it’s born, but...I feel more like a surrogate than anything else. And telling people the baby is mine makes things complicated. So I say surrogate. Otherwise…” 

She turns to Cheryl, a wry smile on her face. “Otherwise, people react like you did.” 

Cheryl can feel her hard exterior crumbling. Toni is  _ looking  _ at her, looking at her like she used to in high school. But it’s seven years later, and Toni is sitting in her passenger seat again, thin and shivering but still holding her chin high. 

She thinks of Thornhill, of the vast halls filled with choking loneliness, then of seven years ago, when the place had felt like a family. That’s what decides it, in the end. With a flick of her wrist, she turns the car on. Toni’s brow furrows in confusion, and she glances to Cheryl. 

“Are you kidnapping me?”

Cheryl lets out a snort. “Hardly, Antoinette. It’s not kidnapping if the kidnapee consents. And I am sure you’ll be hard-pressed to say no to a burger from Pops and a night in a warm bed at Thornhill. No pressure, of course. We will sleep in different wings. It’s not as if I don’t have the room.” 

“Cheryl, I don’t need…”

“I do.” It’s a bit more honest than she meant to be than she ever means to be. But if honesty gets her a warm car and a warm body in her house tonight, then maybe she could do with a bit more of it. 

“You may not need it, but I do.” 

And then the smile that lights Toni’s face is brighter than any billboard in Milan. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


**Veronica**

  
  


The test was positive, but it can’t be positive. 

Yes, her period was late, and that was what  _ finally _ convinced her to take the test. But the test was past its expiration date, and it was the only one available. Plus, it’s just one test, and it  _ can’t  _ be positive. It’s wrong. 

Veronica repeats these things to herself, again and again, as her brain struggles to find their meaning. She’s calm. She’s in a level state of mind. She knows it’s not positive, and she will take steps to prove it. That’s all that matters. 

So she buys six tests from a store two towns over, where nobody recognizes her. Perfunctory tests because she would  _ know  _ if she was pregnant. And she was meticulous with birth control. And it wouldn’t,  _ couldn’t _ happen now. 

She has nowhere to go. She can’t take her six tests home because Chad would be  _ so  _ excited, even if it’s a lie. After all, she’s not pregnant. 

She can’t go to Pops. She certainly can’t go to her parents’ house. There is only one place, as Veronica searches her mind, that she could go. 

* * *

  
  
  


The bunker has clearly not gone unoccupied. There is no musty smell, no cobwebs, which makes little sense until Veronica spots the unmistakable murder board as her heels clanging on the stairs’ metal. 

It’s also, she realizes, not quiet. In fact, noises are coming from the bunker. Her stomach drops at the prospect of another place she can’t use, and she very nearly turns around until she catches a sob from inside, and it piques her interest just enough to peek in. 

For the second time, she comes face to face with a sobbing Betty Cooper, sitting back against the wall on the bed, tears spilling down her cheeks. 

And now it’s too late to turn away, because her heels make an unmistakable noise, and Betty looks up. 

Green eyes take Veronica in, and she does notice, however briefly, that Betty’s gaze lights up. 

“V,” she breathes. “I mean…” she stumbles to her feet, the metal springs clanking under her. Her cheeks are wet because she was crying, and it puts a very strange sensation inside Veronica’s belly.

“You were crying.” She shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t. 

“It’s not...I mean, I can...you don’t have to...:” Betty stumbles over a few explanations, eyes flicking between Veronica and the exit ladder. 

“What’s wrong?”

It’s as if she’s not in control of her voice. This is no longer her best friend. She shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t care at all. 

But Betty’s cheeks are wet, and despite all logic, Veronica wants to comfort her. She wants to find the person who hurt Betty and cause them pain. 

It’s not the same as it was in high school, but in some ways, maybe it is. 

“It’s just….Jughead stuff.”

“Jughead stuff?” Veronica allows herself a brief chuckle. “I guess some things never change.” Betty and Jughead, unable to stay away from each other, despite anything that may happen. But save for the last few days of their relationship, Veronica has only ever known Jughead to bring Betty up. 

“What are you...I mean, I didn’t expect to see you here.” It’s a fair statement, she supposes. Veronica has rarely come to the bunker of her own volition. Except, a tiny voice reminds her, when visiting and hiding away an injured Archie. 

Veronica considers lying. She’s very good at it, and no doubt, she could say something convincing, and Betty would believe her. 

But, she finds, she doesn’t want to. Something deep in her, something she had thought long buried, something screams out for kinship, for comfort. And once it takes over, the thought is nearly overwhelming. It sings through her veins, she can feel it pounding in her heart, and she can feel her hand reaching inside the paper bag and pulling out a pregnancy test. 

Betty looks at her, then down at the test. Understanding dawns in her eyes. She takes a step closer, and Veronica does not feel the urge to move away. 

“Vee,” she breathes. “Are you…”

“No,” Veronica says firmly. “I’m not. This is just a matter of...proving it.” 

Betty nods hesitantly. “Do you…want me to leave?”

For once, Veronica follows her heart, not her head. “No.” 

It’s all she can manage, but it’s all Betty seems to need. 

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll...I’ll wait here.”

  
  
  


There’s a three-minute waiting window between taking a test and the results. Veronica knows this from the last test, which informed her how agonizingly long three minutes is. The tests are all lined up across the table, windows all still shut, when she flops down on the bed beside Betty. 

It feels like those little strips of plastic are staring at her as if they are waiting to make a judgment. Veronica rips her gaze away and settles on Betty. 

“So,” she says. “Jughead. Tell me. Distract me.” 

“You want to hear about Jug and me?”

Veronica nods. “I need to. I need a distraction.” 

Betty huffs out a breath, twining her fingers together. 

“It’s a lot. Being back here, seeing him, it’s a lot.” 

“A lot, feelings wise?”

Betty nods. “I wanted to move on, you know? I wanted to feel like I moved on. And I have, I guess. I mean, I have friends. I have a life in D.C. And there have been guys, some guys. But when I came here, I realized it never felt...right.” 

Betty twists her fingers into one another, scrapes at her palms with her fingertips. 

“I laid myself out for him, Veronica. But he...he had a girlfriend. Or has, I don’t know. But we woke up together, and I looked at him and...I couldn’t imagine myself with anyone else.”

Her expression is pained. Veronica thinks back on the unit that was Betty and Jughead for so many years. To the boy who carried Betty out of the woods, whispering soothing words in her ear after her father was shot in front of her. Or to the nervous delight that had coated Betty’s tone when she confessed that Jughead had kissed her for the first time. 

“You should tell him this.”

Betty shakes her head. “It’s too late. With or without Jessica, it’s been too long. We can’t just...go back to what we were.”

“No,” Veronica muses. “Maybe not. But maybe...you can get to something different. Someday, even better.”

There’s implication in her words, and she knows Betty catches it. 

“Thanks, Veronica.” she smiles gently, a genuine light in her eyes, so bright that Veronica can’t help but smile too. 

The trance breaks when a timer goes off. Betty swings her gaze to the row of pregnancy tests, then back to Veronica. But Veronica is frozen. Her legs lock under her, and her breath starts coming in little gasps. 

Laying her head in her hands, she exhales a shaky breath. “They’re not positive. They can’t be positive.”

“Veronica…”

“ _ They can’t be positive.”  _ It’s said, and the wave instantly follows it: the stupid, useless tears and the coldness taking over her whole body.    
  


But then Betty reaches out and takes her hand. And it feels good. It feels almost like it used to. It breaks something inside of her, a wall that she had erected post-Riverdale. She looks into the eyes of her former best friend, and she feels a piece of her long-forgotten start to return.

“It can’t be positive,” she breathes. “Because then...then I never get out.”

Betty cocks her head in confusion. “Out?”

Veronica shakes her head. “Not out of Riverdale. If we have a baby...I’m a Lodge and a Gekko. Forever. I am the silent trophy wife, standing by her husband through everything. If I have  _ his _ baby...I have no chance of leaving this family.”

Betty moves a hand to stroke up and down her back. “Oh, Vee,” she says. 

The tears come hard and fast now. Veronica feels her breathing change, come more quickly and harder. 

“If I have a baby, I will never leave them. I’ll be my mother. I’ll be a trophy wife. That’s why I always said no when they asked about kids. It’s not that I never wanted them, it's that...I would become like them, and I just  _ couldn’t. _ ”

There’s no hesitation as Betty slides to Veronica and gathers her up. Veronica lays her head on Betty’s shoulder and finally lets the tears flow freely. 

“I was so careful! I use condoms; I’m on birth control so that I don’t become her. She...she told me to manipulate Archie using sex, B. I was  _ fifteen. _ And if this is true...I become her.”

“Never,” Betty whispers. Pulling back, she swipes her thumbs over Veronica’s cheeks, wiping the tears. “Whatever the test says, Vee, you will  _ never  _ be her. You’re the best of us. That kindness, that goodness...that will never disappear. Never.” 

Veronica lets out another heaving sob and throws herself back into the arms of her best friend. 

* * *

  
  
  


She can’t do it. 

Veronica looks out to the row of tests, heaving in a breath. The distance of maybe three feet feels insurmountable and impossible. Her future lies on that rickety table. 

She can’t look. The voice in her head from before, the one that was  _ sure _ the tests were negative, is silent now, and she can’t imagine ever having enough courage to face it. 

But before she has to, Betty unfurls her legs and drops Veronica’s hand, sliding off the bed and making her way over to the table. She leans over and eyes the tests. Veronica can barely hear anything, can barely speak around the lump in her throat and her pounding heart. 

But when Betty turns back to her, there’s a smile on her face. 

“They’re negative, Veronica. They’re all negative.” 

The words barely register, and it must show on her face because Betty comes closer, kneels in front of her with a test in one hand, and laces their fingers together. 

“Six tests, Veronica. They’re all negative. You’re not pregnant.”

“I’m not pregnant?” 

Betty shakes her head, squeezing Veronica’s hand and holding up one test with only one solid line. “You’re not pregnant.” 

The warmest relief Veronica has ever known surges through her takes her to her feet and over to the row of tests. 

All one line. All negative. 

She feels giddy, free. She turns and yanks Betty into her arms. 

* * *

  
  


They have finally pulled apart when a tinny alarm sounds out, but it’s not awkward. For the first time in so long, it’s not uncomfortable. 

Veronica reaches down and fishes out her phone. 

With a groan, she switches off the “multivitamins” alarm. A perfunctory alarm, because she wouldn’t forget, but Chad insists that he needs proof that she does take her medication, and this felt too tiny a thing to fight about. 

Reaching into her purse, she dumps her medication into her hand. She’s about to take it when Betty suddenly reaches out and grabs the hand, stopping its trajectory. 

“B, what the hell?” 

Betty pays her no mind and plucks the pill out of her hand. 

“Betty, what is it?”

But Betty doesn’t answer, just takes the pill and brings it near the table, under better light, inspecting it. 

It’s odd. Betty’s cheeks are pale, her fingernail scraping over the pill and her eyes intensely focused. That look, Veronica has seen many times. It’s the investigative Betty look.

She takes it as a sign that she knows Betty well, even after all this time, because Betty is turning the pill over and over in her hand, running her fingertips over the white edges, shredding the white powder. 

“Betty?”

“Veronica,” Betty says, her voice low. “Why are you taking this?”

“What are you talking about? Chad gets it from New York. It’s just a multivitamin.”

Betty shakes her head, closing her hand on the pill and crushing the rest into powder. 

  
“I don’t know how they made it look similar to a multivitamin, but I’ve seen this in cases before. Veronica, this isn’t a multivitamin; it’s a clomiphene pill.” 

“Clomiphene?”

There’s a long pause. “It’s meant to increase ovulation, Veronica. It’s a fertility pill.” 

* * *

  
  
  


**Betty**

Veronica tells her she’s fine. Perhaps she is, but Betty makes sure that Veronica has her number and a place to go. After so much progress, Betty doesn’t want to push it too far, but her skin burns for the injustice Veronica faced without knowing it, and she can’t not say anything. 

“Look...I know you don’t trust me. And you have that right, I understand. But...if you ever…”

Betty toes at the ground. 

“Nobody’s at my house right now. And the other bedroom is empty.” 

Veronica may feel safe going home to her husband, but Betty does not feel safe letting her go back to him. To the kind of man that would try to force a choice on Veronica that he had no right to. 

Veronica had assured Betty that Chad wouldn’t be home yet and that she needed time to plan what to say. Betty certainly doesn’t feel she’s at the point where she can tell Veronica what to do, so she lets her go. 

So as she makes her way back to the hotel, Betty feels both lighter and heavier. She’s going to pack her things. With her mother gone, it just makes sense to stay at the house. There needs to be somebody there, and that someone should be here. So she collects her mail from the concierge and goes to pack her belongings. 

  
She’d barely noticed the mail’s contents until she goes to throw it in her purse, and then the note slips out.

The blood-red font is hard to miss.

The FBI training kicks in as she fishes a glove out of her purse and picks up the piece of paper. It has no return address, but her name is unquestionably on it. 

She’s been in dozens of life or death scenarios. She’s seen things that would cripple an average person. She should not be scared by this. 

But the glove passes over the writing, and it chips as blood would. And she reads the words with her heart pounding wildly in her ears. 

“The randoms have fallen. The next people we come for are you.”

  
  
  


She can’t dial Jughead’s number fast enough. He answers on the first ring, and his tone tells her everything she needs to know. 

It’s not just the note. She got a note, but Jughead didn’t. He got a list. The four-page list is titled on each page. They meet at the house on Elm Street, and he hands it to her, white-faced. Betty’s heart pounds harder with every heading. 

_ Betty Cooper. _

_ Forsythe Jones III _

_ Archie Andrews _

_ Veronica Lodge  _

It’s a compendium. It is a compendium of every movement they’ve made for weeks. The addresses are printed in bold type, every moment, every move they’ve made for weeks. 

_ Pops. 10:22 am, Monday.  _

_ Home, Elm Street, 1:48 pm, Monday.  _

The lists end that very morning, with the bone-chilling words  _ Betty Cooper/Veronica Lodge, Bunker, Fox Forest.  _

Jughead swears softly under his breath. “It was at my hotel room door. These fuckers have been watching our every move.” 

“For weeks,” Betty breathes. “Killing people around us, tracking our every movie.” 

Jughead passes a hand through his hair. “For what? They kill people around us, random people, then people we know? To what end?”

“To make us suffer. To confuse us. To torture us. Who knows but...clearly, we’re the next targets. 

* * *

  
  


  
Jughead goes around the house, locking the windows and doors, moving the furniture against the doors. 

He scratches the back of his neck as he looks at her and suggests maybe it should be her who calls Archie, that he’ll call Veronica. The tone is odd, but there is no time to scrutinize it. Archie’s at the gym, and while he sounds surprised to hear from her, he agrees to come to her place at her rushed assurance that she’ll explain later. 

She clicks off the phone as Jughead re-enters, brow furrowed. 

“Veronica on her way over?” she asks. He shakes his head. 

“Couldn’t reach her.” 

That, in itself, is odd. Veronica is a businesswoman. Her phone is on her at all times, and she’s sure Jug would have told her via text that it was important beforehand. Betty’s heart picks up slightly, and she grabs the phone from Jughead’s hand. 

“Jug, it’s important. Can we call her doorman?”

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


According to the doorman, Veronica hasn’t left since she got home. They manage to use Betty’s FBI influence to convince him to go upstairs and knock on the door. A moment later, he reports back. Still no answer. 

A pit of dread is rapidly forming in Betty’s stomach. She casts a look at Jughead, and he looks back at her. 

“We have to go get her,” she says. He nods, puts a hand on her shoulder. 

“Fun times, Cooper.” 

* * *

  
They are perhaps more careful than they have ever been as they make their way over to the hotel. Jughead drives the bike, and Betty keeps a very close watch on the street, trees, and people. A direct threat on their life and nothing to indicate how it may happen? It’s not a scenario they’ve faced in a long time. 

They crash into the hotel, startling the doorman, who recoils as Betty shoves her badge in his face. 

“Veronica Gekko. We called earlier?”

“Yes, ma’am. As I stated on the phone, I tried to contact Mrs. Gekko, but there was no response. I’m afraid there’s nothing else I can do.”

Betty breathes deeply and fixes the man with the most FBI look she can muster. “Well, no offense, sir, but you’re wrong. I am a Federal Agent, and there is a direct threat to Mrs. Gekko’s life. We have to take her into protection, so I suggest you get that key and open that door before this place is swarming with FBI agents. That wouldn’t be very good for business, I’d imagine, especially at such an...upscale location.”

The man visibly pales, and within five minutes, they are on their way up to Veronica’s room. Betty feels Jughead’s hot gaze on her, and ever so briefly, her mind flashes back to a different time and a different threat against someone who refused to take a blond sixteen year old seriously. Only that time, there was no threat against their lives, and it had ended with Jughead pinning her to the wall and gasping, “ _ god, _ that was hot.”

Betty’s face heats, and she casts her gaze away from Jughead as they come to Veronica’s door. 

There is indeed no answer, not when they knock, ring the bell, or yell her name. The doorman, under much prompting, hesitatingly slides the key card in and opens the door. 

Betty’s hand immediately flies to her side for her gun, and she steps in front of an unarmed Jughead. 

A quick scan of the rooms reveals no occupants. Veronica is indeed not there, but there is a note. 

Betty’s stomach drops to her throat as she takes in the words, in the same blood red. 

_ Gotcha _ , is all it says, and then Betty’s heart picks up to a race. 

Whirling back to the doorman, she presses a finger into his chest. “I want the name of every single person who interacted with her in the last few hours.” 

“C-certainly, Agent. I’ll call the desk immediately.” 

Betty nods. “Good. I want those names in the next two minutes, or I will personally come for you.” 

Jughead lays a hand on her arm in a vain attempt to calm her, but she shakes him off. There is no calm now, not when people who have demonstrated no qualms with killing have Veronica and a head start on them. 

The hotel manager is called in, carting an iPad with a list of the residents and guests. His face is pinched and hesitant, and that’s all it takes to know it’s not good news. He apologizes to Betty and proffers the iPad. 

“Nobody who was not on the approved list was in this residence in the last few hours, Agent.” 

“That’s impossible.”

“No, only one visitor, and they were on the approved list.”

Betty breathes deeply. “When did they arrive?”

“About an hour ago, ma’am.”

“And who was it?”

“Betts?” Jug’s voice comes from behind her. She turns quickly, and what he’s holding makes her heart pound.

It’s a lollipop stick. 

“The only approved visitor signed in through the initials T.T.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....any guesses? It's not Toni Topaz, I'll give you that. 
> 
> And Jessica leaves! Poor Jessica. That girl was fighting a losing battle from day 1 and it's not her fault. Also, we find out why Veronica doesn't want kids. Poor V. Too good for this world. 
> 
> I gotta tell you guys, I am...not excited for pregnant Toni. I'm just not. We have to suffer through these things until midseason but we will make it!!


	9. stitching up the seams that had been torn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His lips float near her, slightly ajar, and then move to press to her forehead. 
> 
> She gives a shaky inhale. “Jug.”
> 
> He moves her face to be looking into her eyes. 
> 
> Where before, he was shaky and jittery, now he’s steady, calm. He holds her up. His eyes are sure. Her breath slowly calms, her eyes focusing. That’s what he did for her all this time. Right from when she was fifteen, and he made the swirling vortex of her mind calm just a little bit. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just...I just want it out of my face. This took so bloody long.

_There's a block on the edge of this town no one talks about_   
_Where the train doesn't stop and the kids know they're not getting out_   
_You live in the loop, the smokes on the stoop_   
_Counting the coins you got_   
_You work at a bar where all that you are is everything you're not_

* * *

_ Betty _

Veronica was gone. Veronica was missing, and FBI Agent Betty Cooper was, lacking a better term, panicking. 

Of course, suspects had gone missing before. She’d organized more than one search party, had canvassed neighborhoods many times during her time with the agency. Some were found alive, some not. She was an FBI agent. She was trained, prepared. She could handle this. 

But this was different. This was Veronica. 

Betty follows every crime scene tech, demands every single report. She orders the security cam footage with authority she doesn’t actually possess, and all the while, her heart pounds wildly. 

_ Veronica’s gone. Veronica’s missing, and I let her go home.  _

The voice pounds at her temples, taunts her in a cruel, mocking tone. It’s loud, but there’s a tiny other voice her mind is drawn to, a voice that tells her  _ it’s not your fault _ and  _ we’ll find her _ . A voice she holds onto, a voice that sounds suspiciously like the voice of Jughead Jones. 

The abductor was sloppy; that much is clear. The crime scene techs report to Betty not thirty minutes later that they found powder residue on Veronica’s glass. A tranquilizer, they wager. Easy to identify. Nearly too easy, she thinks, but counts her blessings anyway. 

The second time Veronica had been drugged in one day, she thinks as well. It would have made Veronica pliant and suggestive, much like the scopolamine that once upon a time, Donna had breathed into her face. She may have passed out. They may have drugged her further. 

TT is easy to figure out, as well. The writing gives no extra clues, but Betty’s brain scans through the people with the initials TT she knows, and it’s a short list. 

Toni is functionally the only other person, and that is discounted quickly. 

The only other person….

“Tabitha Tate,” Betty breathes, as the surveillance footage confirms her suspicions. Tabitha leads Veronica away, her arm looped through Veronica’s, who leans against the girl, looking dazed. 

“That  _ bitch _ ,” Betty snarls. Behind her, she feels Jughead nod. 

* * *

As it turns out, the evidence comes threefold because the license plate on Tabitha’s car is also visible as she drives Veronica away. 

She barks out orders to local LEOs. They are to search every place Veronica has been in the last few weeks. Oddly, the list the killers have left them proves to be helpful with this. They have itemized all of Veronica’s locations for them, and it is what she gives to the local cops while being very clear that they are  _ only _ to search these locations and not report anything to the FBI, only to her. The cops are also to look for anywhere Tabitha Tate may be, but  _ they _ will check the diner. If someone raids Pops, it feels like it should be the two of them. The two who know it best. 

(Jughead gives a wry laugh and informs her that she is still as terrifying as she once was.)

With that, she heads out to look for Tabitha. Jughead falls into step behind her immediately. He shakes a bit, she notices, as he does nowadays. But he’s here, and that brings her a not insignificant measure of comfort.

* * *

  
  


The diner is closed. The door is locked tight, but Betty has kept some things from her high school days. The pin in her hair slides out quickly, and it’s not long before she hears the  _ click  _ of the lock releasing.

She feels Jughead suck in a breath behind her, but he doesn’t say anything. Nonetheless, a momentary shiver shoots up her spine. 

Pops is dark and unoccupied. Betty doesn’t exactly expect their prime suspect to be at the most obvious place, but she still searches every nook and cranny. Bathrooms, under chairs, closets, even down in the speakeasy, her gun leading the way in front of her. 

Nothing. Betty slams a fist down on the counter as frustration floods through her, and her mind conjures up images of Veronica, limp and tied up. She’s the FBI agent. She should have seen this. She should have prevented this. 

She rakes her hands through her loose ponytail, heart pounding. 

_ You can get to something different. Someday, even better. _

Veronica had told her that. Her best friend, the girl who had made her feel a bit less alone as loved ones fell away like dominoes around her. The girl who had, on more than one occasion, saved her life. 

But Betty couldn’t save hers. Her breath comes in spurts as she imagines Veronica, bleeding or tortured or dead. Her fault, always her fault. 

“Betty,” she dimly hears Jughead say. “Betty,  _ breathe _ . “ 

“I can’t,” she gasps. “I can’t, she’s gone, and it’s my...and I…”

And then her cheeks are warm, and her eyes stare into blue. She feels like she’s drowning, but then she’s looking at Jughead Jones, closer than they’ve been in so very long. 

His hands lay on her cheeks, his thumbs stroking over her cheeks, and her heart is still beating loud but for a different reason. 

His lips float near her, slightly ajar, and then move to press to her forehead. 

She gives a shaky inhale. “ _ Jug _ .”

He moves her face to be looking into her eyes. 

Where before, he was shaky and jittery, now he’s steady, calm. He holds her up. His eyes are sure. Her breath slowly calms, her eyes focusing. That’s what he did for her all this time. Right from when she was fifteen, and he made the swirling vortex of her mind calm just a little bit. 

“We’re going to find her, Betts,” he says. 

She inhales shakily. “Alive?”

He nods. “You bet your ass we will.” 

She nods. “And you’ll be here?”

He will, she knows. There’s almost no need to ask, but she does need to. 

“Until the wheels fall off.”

She doesn’t know how long that is. Until they solve the case? When they owe nothing more to each other, what are they then? 

She wants Veronica back so badly; she wants these psychos caught, but what then? Being back in Riverdale, or more accurately, being back with Jughead, feels like coming alive. Will she have to go back to the way it was before, never see him again? Will the fragile sense of  _ home _ and family that’s slowly been building in the last few weeks crumble? Will she want to hold onto it?

_ Can _ she? 

She moves her hands up so they’re covering his, stroking over the rough skin. He looks like he wants to say something but seems unable to get the words out. 

“I…,” he hesitates, unable to break the trance, but he needs to say this. “Jessica and I are over.” 

Betty gives a slow nod. So he’s here. And he’s single. But as she realized, Jessica was so little of their issues. “So...what does that mean?”

This time, he does hesitate. Neither of them know what it means, she thinks. Neither of them are willing to take that leap. That precipice is there, and it could suck them both down, or they could soar. But she can’t be the one to make that leap, and neither can he. 

His hands fall off her face, and Betty clears her throat and steps back. Her back hits a wall, and her arm grabs at a shelf to steady herself. Her fingertips touch books, but the tap it makes is dull. Almost hollow. 

That gets both their attention. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


It’s almost ironic. The books are fake, and inside their hollowed-out centers, papers are piled. It was hidden, but not well. Like most things, it seems almost as if they wanted Betty and Jughead to find it. 

The first stack consists entirely of bills. Jughead declares himself the expert of such things, but it takes no real expertise to note the Pops logo and the  _ Past Due _ sticker on many, many of them. Some are years old, some months, some are even within the last few weeks. 

_ Dear Ms. Tabitha Tate _ , the more recent ones begin and go on to inform her that her debt has been sent to collections. Then there are books full of numbers, profit margins.

_ Veronica’s area of expertise _ , Betty thinks wryly. 

She’s no expert, but she reads through the books, and the numbers pre-2017 are decent. Not excellent, but profitable. Post-2017, though, the numbers dip. They’re now written in harsh red and seem to coincide with several of the past-due notices.

The next pile is articles—printed articles from the web, newspaper clippings, all following the same theme.

_ Teens Catch Black Hood Killer.  _

_ Sinister Game Expelled From Riverdale. _

The articles are about them. Every article that could ever have been written about them is contained in the box, and when she digs deeper, the tone of the papers changes. 

_ Citizens Report Feelings of Extreme Fear. _

_ Riverdale Among Most Dangerous Places in the Country _

_ High Murder Rate and Lazy Law Enforcement: How A Charming Small Town Hid a Dark Underbelly.  _

The articles are about Riverdale. Again and again, the town is reported as dangerous, unsafe. Haunted. 

Betty cannot find it in her to disagree. 

They search for hours, read and analyze, and through it all, Betty notices a change in Jughead. The man that held her steady begins to change. He scratches at his hair, his skin, his nails. His limbs jerk. He’s nervous, his eyes start to dart around, and she watches as his hand curls into a fist, then releases. Then curls again, then releases. 

Looking at the clock, she estimates that they’ve been there for three hours, and still, the police have not tracked down Tabitha Tate. They’ve gone to her house, started questioning her family, checked into her daily routine, but nothing. 

He swipes at his forehead, and her fingers creep close to his, nearly unconsciously. He peers down at her hand, but he doesn’t take it. Instead, he stands, papers in hand, and paces. 

* * *

  
  


_ Jughead _

He flies on adrenaline for so long—Betty’s frantic, and Veronica’s missing. 

So he does what he swore he’d never do again. He calls Archie. And he calls Chad. 

(Chad repeats his name at least four times, to the point where Jughead is starting to get annoyed.) 

He tells both of them about Veronica, and the reactions are….different. Chad seems to think that his contribution should be sending investigators on his own dime to look for Veronica. He’s worried, and there is genuine care in his voice; Jughead can hear it. But his immediate instincts differ from Archie’s. 

Where Chad seems to think that the way to find his wife is with money and specialized units, Archie is a match set on fire. He insists on knowing where Jughead and Betty are, where to look, who he should talk to.

Jughead suspects that by “talk to,” he means “punch until they give him the right answer.” Chad is methodical; Archie is a spinning top. But both seem to hold genuine care for Veronica. Both seem to want to find her genuinely. 

He thinks perhaps someone should go get Archie. Someone should be steadying Archie too, but he doesn’t have near the emotional bandwidth, and to be honest, even if he did, he can’t say he’d spend it keeping Archie in line. 

He’s not used to having to worry about this anymore. 

He, however, is used to it being just him and Betty. They did what law enforcement couldn’t, and evidently, that hadn’t changed. For these moments, tense and fractured as they were, they felt like Betty and Jughead again, not Betty, and Jughead. It was a nice feeling, but he can feel his forehead sweating and his stomach clenching through it all. 

He tells Archie to go and retrace Veronica’s steps, sends him a list of her whereabouts for the last hour, and figures Archie can shake down some people for information. He accepts Chad’s offer of private investigators and manages to reassure both of them somewhat.

But his attention lies elsewhere, lies in a frantic blonde he follows all around town. 

Like he said, he runs on adrenaline. 

But after awhile, he starts to feel the familiar signs. He starts to feel the ache in his bones and the pains in his stomach. 

After awhile, his brain starts calling out, and his fingers start reaching out for the flask. 

The voice in his head screams out for a drink, and it gets louder and louder until it’s all he can hear. Until he can’t ignore it anymore. 

And she’s right there. She’s looking at him, her hand just inches from his. He could grab on. He could fight this. He could be a better man, for her, but also for himself. 

But life has punched the fight out of Jughead Jones so many times, and when it has, alcohol has been there. Yes, he’s aware of what it did to his father. But he is grown. No children depend on him, and for so long, he was sure he was handling it fine. 

But now, Betty is looking at him, and his head is just so  _ loud, _ and if everything could calm down, maybe he could be the Jughead Jones of before again. That great detective, who had a family and a girlfriend and a future. He could be more than what he is. That’s what the alcohol did for him. 

And that, in the end, is what forces the words out. 

“I need...Betty, I need a drink.”

He needs it. He doesn’t  _ want _ it. That’s an important distinction to make. He’s never  _ wanted _ any of this. 

And to his great shock, after a long pause, Betty doesn’t deny him. In fact, Betty nods. She takes him by the hand and leads him down to La Bonne Nuit. She fishes her phone out of her pocket and looks something up, then pours him a glass of whiskey. 

The amber liquid sloshes slightly over the top of the glass, and it’s  _ right there _ . The solution to his problems. An answer given to him, one he doesn’t have to hide. 

Pushing it towards him, she meets his shocked gaze. 

“Betty?”

“Drink,” she says. “And you better savor it.” 

She slides her phone across the table to him, and he glances down. She’s opened a search engine and typed in the words that boil his blood. 

_ AA meetings near me _ . 

Jughead can feel the judgment in her stare and in those words, and the shame boils hot under his skin.

“You better savor it, because as soon as we find Veronica, we’re going to a meeting.”

“I’m not…” 

“No, of course,” her voice is dripping with sarcasm. “No, you’re not an  _ alcoholic.  _ You don’t need to drink. You have it totally under control.”

His blood is past boiling. He’s past logic; he’s past reasoning. He needs a drink. 

And she’s called him an alcoholic. 

_ Your father is an alcoholic, Jughead. And you know what they say about sins of the father _ . This time, it’s his mother’s voice, a condemnation of both of them. A word he shouldn’t have had to know at twelve years old before his sister was ripped from him, and he had to negotiate life in a closet. 

_ Alcoholic _ . The word had  _ meaning _ for him. The word was why people looked at his dad with judgment in their gaze at the supermarket. Why the teachers called social workers in that never helped him. Why there were bruises on him and no food in his belly, what had destroyed his family and childhood, and she tosses it casually at him. Like it means nothing. Like she has  _ any _ idea what it means. 

Like he wouldn’t sacrifice anything for her, and she tosses him off so casually. 

  
“Don’t fucking try me, Betty,” he growls. “Don’t open that door. Don’t go looking for flaws because we both know where I could take that.” 

It rips through him. The anger chews a hole inside of him, and it’s pure spite that grabs the glass before she can pull it away. 

Alcoholic, she says. He downs the glass in one gulp, and the shock in her expression only makes him feel good. 

And suddenly, it’s him with a pair of hands on his cheeks. It’s him with a pair of green eyes looking into his. 

Her thumb moves on his cheek, just incrementally, and he can only think that his breath smells like alcohol. For years, it’s smelled like alcohol, and didn’t she deserve so, so much better than that? 

For a moment, she just breathes. She looks at him and breathes. 

He can barely form a coherent thought, not with those green eyes on him, but he puts the glass down, and his hands find the divots of her hips. 

A shudder passes through both of them.

“You want to be a jerk?” she says. “Be a jerk. But drink that, and then come to a meeting with me. Just you and me. But please, don’t give up. Don’t give up now, because you being a jerk doesn’t scare me, not when…”

She breaks off. Her eyes are teary, but they shine with a determination he hasn’t seen in so long. With a light that used to be enough for both of them, when they were terrified kids clinging to each other in a world that made them feel so very alone. 

“I need you.” 

* * *

  
  


_ Cheryl _

She insists Toni sleep in her bed. 

_ My four-poster bed is your four-poster bed; she _ remembers saying, once upon a time. Toni tries to protest, but Cheryl can see the exhaustion in her. 

She makes Toni some tea, insists she eat something, and she’s asleep before Cheryl knows it. As her eyes flicker closed, Toni reaches out and seizes Cheryl’s hand. 

Her heart nearly stops, and Toni does not let go. Even when her breathing has evened out, and she is sleeping soundly, her hand tightly grasps Cheryl’s. 

While she sleeps, Cheryl’s eyes drink her in. From her braided hair to her rounded belly to the circles under her eyes. 

She sits, she watches, and she revels in the fact that someone wants her beside them. For more than her body, someone wants her, Cheryl Blossom. Someone that knows the ins and out of her. The secrets and sins. 

She knows more than most that Toni doesn’t need anyone to take care of her. But Cheryl  _ wants _ to. 

She thinks of what Toni said earlier, how it hadn’t been easy, how Cheryl wasn’t there and didn’t know. And the baby. How there were parents already, and they wanted this baby, this baby that was part Toni. How could they not, she thinks. But what a thing to go through alone. What a thing to have people judge you for. 

Toni looks small, and thin, but she’s surviving. They have that in common because Cheryl is surviving too. They’re both hanging on by a thread, and Cheryl Blossom isn’t even sure hope is a thing she possesses anymore. She isn’t sure she knows how  _ not _ to feel empty. She doesn’t know how to live without regret. Strangely, that regret is hard to even consider giving up because what is she without it?

But here, and now, with Toni, Cheryl feels more at home than she has in a long time. She’s had supermodels in her bed. Women who worshipped her and gave her everything she ever wanted, but the void never went away. 

Toni sighs in her sleep, and she feels that vast emptiness inside her close, just a little. 

She nearly jumps out of her skin at the quiet voice. 

“I can hear you thinking. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing that should trouble you, I daresay nothing in your current condition, Tee Tee.”

A soft sigh. “Cheryl. You look as exhausted as me.” A hand tugs her, and Cheryl finds herself pulled down until her head is level with Toni’s.

Thair hands disentangle briefly, only so long as to brush a lock of red hair back from Cheryl’s face, and then their fingers tangle again. 

“Sleep, Cheryl,” Toni says gently. “We can talk about it in the morning.” 

* * *

  
  


_ Veronica _

Her head is pounding. That’s the first thing she thinks of when she wakes. 

The second is that she’s cold. 

Until her eyes squeeze open and adjust to the thankfully dim lighting, that’s all she’s able to think. The pain in her temples makes orienting herself impossible, and her arms prickle with goosebumps. 

Veronica brings her hands to rub over her arms as soon as she regains any control over her body, but they don’t move. 

Her hands remain tightly fastened behind her back, and as her brain slowly catches up, she finds the same of her legs. Her brains slowly whirs back into action, cataloging everything around her. 

A dripping noise from behind her. Her arms and legs, tightly pressed into her body. A hard surface underneath her. The chafing of her dirty clothes, and finally, a toe tapping from a person standing in front of her. 

The person scoffs, and as Veronica’s neck finally allows itself to be moved, she rolls her gaze up to see Tabitha Tate. 

She wants to rub her eyes, fix her hair so she can see straight. She wants to know what she’s doing here and how she got here. 

And maybe that’s obvious because Tabitha crouches in front of her.

“Wondering what happened, Veronica?” she says, and her tone has changed. The warmth is gone. It’s rough, and maybe she imagines it, but she catches notes of hurt. 

“Yeah,” Veronica says, her voice scratchy from lack of use. “I guess one does wonder what happened when they wake up hogtied in what appears to be - “ she glances around at the windowless brick surrounding her. “An unfinished basement?”

Tabitha gives a quirk of a smile. “Not the grandiose that you were expecting, I’m sure. But this is where I needed to take you. It’s where this finally ends.” 

That’s an ominous statement if Veronica has ever heard one. 

“ _ What _ ends?” 

Tabitha simply smiles, and tips a glass of water to Veronica’s lips. She turns her head away instantaneously, and the girl shrugs, setting it on a shelf. 

“Suit yourself. Too soon for you to know anyway.” 

Her head pounds just a tiny bit less, so Veronica is able to look around her. It does indeed appear to be a basement, but it’s windowless. Most places are dark, but she can see a nook in the corner with a chair that holds her bag, Tabitha’s, and a few other things she can’t see. A fan rests in the corner, and she hears paper flapping. There are no other sounds, so she doesn’t try to hold onto the hope that other people here may save her. 

There’s only her and Tabitha. 

Veronica breathes deeply, puts her mind on business mode. She’s been in seemingly inescapable situations before. Panicking does her no good. No, she has to find a way out. She has to reach someone, and she has to not get killed in the meantime. 

And that starts with pacifying Tabitha and perhaps finding out a bit more about this dastardly plan she seems to have incepted. 

“You pretended to be my friend.” 

Tabitha looks down, toeing at the dirt. It’s not particularly the look of someone masterminding a murder, and that comforts her a little. But the girl’s eyes are hard when she lifts her gaze. 

“I did my job. I did what they wanted me to do, and soon, it’ll all be worth it.”

She’s talking, and that’s good. Veronica has learned bits and pieces from Betty and Jughead over the years, and she knows the longer she can keep Tabitha talking, the longer Betty, Jughead, and Archie have to find her. 

“Tabitha,” she makes her voice low, affects a tone of sadness that she’s fairly certain is convincing, given how close it is to her actual feelings. “I thought we  _ were _ friends.” 

Tabitha’s eyes flit to hers, and they are alight with rage. She sweeps to her feet, tightens the ropes around Veronica’s hands and feet. It’s not necessary; they’re plenty tight already, but Veronica still yelps with pain at the pinching, and that seems to be all Tabitha is looking for. 

“ _ Friends _ ,” she gasps. “I couldn’t...I could never be _ friends _ with any of you! After what you’ve done to me, after what you’ve done to my family, you are lucky I let you live this long!”

That’s a sentence that Veronica’s heard before, and it’s usually attached to one person. 

“Tabitha, did my father…”

She whips her head back and forth. “He was a part of it, but a small part. No, it was you four! Always you, who sunk the town down so low. Who made the pride of my grandfather’s life into a spot people were afraid to go. He used to spend every night going over the books, searching for any way that he could keep us, keep our family afloat.”

  
It sounds like she’s choking down tears as she gets up and paces in front of Veronica. 

“The diner meant everything to Grandpa. He was...he did everything for everyone, including you four, and what did you do for him? You made this place that he loved, a place that nobody would come to! You  _ ruined _ things for us, for our whole family, and then he died, and it’s you four’s fault! How could I ever be friends with any of you? How could I even look at you, the little Park Avenue princess, knowing that while you sat in your penthouse, Grandpa lost  _ everything _ ?”

The hurt is fairly instantaneous. Tabitha blames her for Pops, a place that had meant so much to her too. She can still see Pops’ gentle face, see his soft smile as he slid a milkshake to her at the exact right time. 

Once upon a time, Tabitha had said that Pop would have been happy they were friends. 

A friend. She had thought Tabitha could be a friend. It’s a thought that seems so ridiculous now. Seven years long without any real friends, how could she possibly have thought this would be different?

Perhaps real friends were only fairy tales. 

Except. Except arms were holding her in the bunker. Except there was a soft voice calling her  _ Vee _ and the person she was, so very long ago, saying that this friendship was real. 

_ Like we were destined _ , she had said. 

Maybe it was. Maybe, this time, Betty knew she was gone. Maybe Betty would save her. 

And Archie....he’d save her. No matter what happened, Veronica knew this. She knew that if only someone had told him, that’d he’d burn the town to the ground looking for her. 

It fills her with a particular sensation she hasn’t felt in a long time; it fills her with hope and maybe even some notes of pride. 

Betty and Archie will come. Betty and Archie will save her. She just has to stay alive until then. 

* * *

  
  


_ Archie _

In his second year in the army, Archie had been sent to combat. That was where he met Jed. 

Combat, for Archie, didn’t at first seem frightening. Something about being from Riverdale, fighting a bear, owning a gym, gangbangers, Hiram Lodge. While the rest of his squad vibrated with nerves, Archie felt a sense of...purpose. 

But after being through combat….things were different. Seeing the light fading from a man’s eyes, watching their open-mouthed gaze, it had shifted something inside of him. So too had seeing the faces of the citizens of the country. They cowered in fear of him. Children ran from him, shouted in their own language that the men were here to kill them. 

Archie would have fought Hiram Lodge a hundred times over to not ever have to experience that. 

And the panic that he felt didn’t go away when he was back, safe in Riverdale. No, it was with him constantly, something he was biting down every day until it crept back up again. 

And now, back here in the place he grew up, it showed up in different ways. An empty house. A gray spot inside his mother’s scans. A phone call saying that Veronica was missing. 

At first, he’d only thought it odd that Jughead was calling him. In the time they live in now, Jughead does not willingly talk to him. He fears, sometimes, that they will end the same as he and Betty, destined to live only in the past. 

He has made his choices, he supposes. 

But when Jughead calls him and first tells him not to panic, then that Veronica is missing, he feels that panic he tries every day to bury consume him. 

He’s fairly certain what he’s feeling would constitute panic. It crawls through him like ants under his skin, and his mind flashes in images of Veronica, her face in the same frozen expression as those soldiers on the battlefield. 

And at the last moment, the moment his breath heaves out of him, and he thinks he may simply stop breathing, there and then, his phone lights up, and the contact reads  _ Jed _ . His fingers fumble over the buttons. Archie is fairly sure that he’s not thinking at all when he manages to press the accept button. 

He certainly doesn’t offer any greeting, but something inside him relaxes ever so slightly at his friend’s voice. 

“Whoa, dude,” Jed sounds like he’s smiling through the tinny connection. “Catch you in the middle of a workout?”

Archie shakes his head uselessly, without realizing Jed can’t see him. He gasps a few things into the phone, none particularly intelligible. 

“Breathe, dude,” he hears his friend’s voice. “Breathe. Remember what the Sargeant used to do with us? Tell me five things you can see.” 

Archie’s mind is racing faster than it has in years, but he can see the blue of the sky. The mottled gray of the pavement. The yellow flash of a car. 

He repeats these things to Jed, and as it did in wartime when Jed was right beside him, it begins to work. His heart rate starts to slow. He starts to be able to feel his fingers again. Full sentences come back to him.

“That’s good,” Jed says, his voice a soothing rumble. “Now four things you can hear.” 

It’s a familiar routine, one they’ve practiced on each other many times again and again until the nightmares abated. Until they could find enough peace of mind to tell jokes, talk about their hometowns, make plans for the future. He always loved it when Jed talked about his family farm. It seemed so...peaceful. A place where all that they had seen couldn’t touch them. 

There was never anything he couldn’t tell Jed. And as the man’s voice soothes him, he tells Jed about Veronica. 

They walk through the abduction, with all the details Jughead has told him like it’s a tactical mission. Like it’s something to be reconned, planned, and executed. The army has given Archie this, too. It has tampered with the instinct to punch his way out of any situation. 

But this time, it’s Veronica. And Veronica….she stirs things inside of him, things he’d thought long dormant. Things that should have been dormant, but she makes him feel like he’s waking up. 

He thinks of her soft hand on his as they talked about his mother. The crinkle in her nose when she drank a cup of hot chocolate that had not yet had time to cool. The way she felt against him when they’d fallen on the ice. 

There’s a word for it, Archie knows. It’s the same word as before, a word that never left them. 

_ Love _ . 

And yes, it’s wrong. She’s married. But Archie has fought for seven years, and he is tired, so tired of fighting. 

He’s so tired of pretending he doesn’t love her. 

Where that leaves them, he doesn’t know. But he has to find her. He has to see her, the only girl he’s ever loved. 

  
  
  


It’s helpful, having a buddy on the inside. Intelligence will likely never find out that Archie and Jed have been - creatively - using sealed records. Even if they did, Archie can’t feel guilty because it gets him in front of a suburban house, a once-listed address for Tabitha Tate, anxiously ringing the doorbell. 

Two, three, four rings, and there is no answer. He growls into the phone, tells Jed that he’s going around back. And he would have, too, but suddenly, there are footsteps behind him, and he doesn’t have near enough time to turn around before he feels something hard make contact with his head, and then everything goes black. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


It’s not the first time he’s been knocked out. Not by a long shot. So his body recognizes what it needs to do as he wakes. He winces against the pain in his head and swallows hard against the dryness in his throat. 

And then he hears it. 

It’s a tiny whisper, but it soothes everything inside him. 

“Archie,” the voice hisses. “Archie, wake up. Are you okay?”

His eyes open, then fall on a head of messy black hair and brown eyes. 

“Veronica,” he breathes out, and she smiles at him. It turns something inside him, that smile. 

“I was wondering when you may wake up,” she says, and her smile widens. “How many times have you been knocked out again?”

Archie groans and tries to reach a hand to his head, but finds them bound. Veronica looks at him sympathetically. 

“She did that to me too.”

“Where are we?”

Veronica shrugs. “In a basement somewhere, I guess. She didn’t tell me, and somehow I doubt she will. How did she catch you?”

Archie shakes his head. “I don’t know. One minute, Jed was helping me look for you; the next, I had a two by four to the head.”

“Jed?”

Archie nods. “Army buddy. We were using the intelligence files, which is...something you may want to keep under your hat.” 

Veronica gives a short laugh. “I’ll remember that if we ever get out of here.” 

“We will,” Archie says resolutely. “Betty and Jughead are looking. They’ll find us. They always do.” 

Veronica shakes her head, the smile still quirking her lips. “They really do. When they work together, and all that. But we could probably stand to give them as much help as possible. Is there anyone listening? Or watching?”

Archie looks carefully. Army training, another thing to be grateful for, he supposes. He scans no cameras and nobody waiting in the shadows. “I don’t think so.”

Veronica nods. “Then let’s see if we can’t get our hands out.” 

Slowly, they skid towards each other. 

The ropes are tight; that much is obvious. They work as quietly as they can and manage to get one arm each free. It seems Tabitha has tied one arm to the chair and the other arm to the first. The arm connected to the chair is tight, and when they get close to freeing it, they hear footsteps on the stairs. 

  
  


“Too much of a risk,” Veronica whispers. He nods, but the word stays with him. 

_ Risk _ . It’s a risk, but Archie has never been scared of risk. And in a place where it looks like they may well be killed, he has little left to hold the words back.

“I’m still in love with you,” he says. Her eyes snap to his at the words. He can’t find it in him to regret it. 

“Archie,” Veronica breathes. 

“I...I know what you’re going to say,” he stumbles. “You’re married. I know. Believe me, I’ve thought of very little else for the past few weeks. You don’t...I mean, I understand if you don’t say it back. Or even don’t feel it. But if we’re here, and we may die...I thought you should know.” 

Veronica brings her one free hand to her mouth, stifling a sob. 

“Oh, shit,” Archie says. “Please don’t cry. I didn’t mean to...I’d never want to make this…”

A hand on his cheek stops him. 

That hand has a ring, but the fingers stroke down his cheek and she stares at him with a tender expression. It’s different than before. It looks like she’s trying to tell him something, something she can’t say. 

“Archie,” she says again, hovering only a few centimeters from his face. Her lips are there, right in front of him, and he  _ could _ , he could kiss her. 

And then she freezes. 

“Archie,” she says again, and this time, her voice holds panic, and her eyes aren’t looking at him. They’re looking behind him, and best he can crane his head, he can see a corner that they’ve drifted near. 

“Archie, look,” she says. 

He doesn’t want to. He wants to be back, in that moment, with her. But her eyes are wide and scared, so he hefts himself around to look. 

It’s hard to see in the dim light, but now that their efforts have moved them closer, he can see the wall is lined with pictures. Not just any pictures, though, pictures of them. Archie, eating at Pops. Veronica, in the elevator at her place. And many, many more. And then some images aren’t them. The walls are lined with pictures of Betty and Jughead as well, in the bunker, at their hotels, in Riverdale’s streets. And there’s one paper, loose and flapping, that Veronica manages to grab.

That paper is a list, a list of dates and times. As they scan down the list, their eyes grow wide. 

_ Three takes Veronica. Hides her in the basement.  _

_ Four gets Archie here. Note to be left. Leave hostages alone.  _

_ Betty and Jughead find the house. Leave clues to ensure. When at door, One and Two knock out.  _

And then at the end. 

_ To be killed together.  _

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Totally unrelated, but I listened to Leave Luanne from 35mm while writing this, and DAMN. BADASS.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to: 
> 
> ArsenicPanda: made the gorgeous cover art that you can check out on Tumblr at thatiranianphantom dot tumblr dot com
> 
> latenightcoffeetalks: left some super helpful comments on the planning draft.
> 
> edamamechips: wrote me a WHOLE ASS PLOT. 
> 
> Go-ldy: my mystery consultant! 
> 
> Thank you to all of you, you are amazing!!


End file.
